Alpe d'Huez Grand Domaine

What is the Alpe d'Huez Grand Domaine like?

The Alpe d'Huez Grand Domaine is the linked ski area around Alpe d'Huez, in the Grandes Rousses range of the Oisans, in Isère. Its official name has changed: the lift company, SATA Group, now sells it as the Espace Alpe d'Huez, and the Villard-Reculas lift pass site calls it "the Espace Alpe d'Huez (formerly the Alpe d'Huez ski area)". This guide uses "Alpe d'Huez Grand Domaine", the name the Auris and Oz tourist office sites still use.

SATA gives the area as 250 km of linked pistes and five resort villages: Alpe d'Huez, Auris-en-Oisans, Villard-Reculas, Oz-en-Oisans and Vaujany. The top is the Pic Blanc at 3,330 m, where the 16 km Sarenne run starts.

This guide covers three of the four smaller villages: Vaujany and Oz-en-Oisans on the west side, and Auris-en-Oisans on the south. Villard-Reculas is covered on this page only.

All four are lift-linked. Not every part of every commune is: in Oz, the ski station is Oz 3300, and Oz village and the other hamlets below reach it by road, or by the Oz Access minibus in school holidays. In Auris, the bus stop called "Auris-en-Oisans" on the regional lines is the hamlet of Le Clapier in the valley, not the ski station.

Where should you stay?

The choice is between an old village, a purpose-built station and which side of the mountain you want to start on.

Vaujany is an old village at 1,250 m with about 350 residents, a swimming pool and an ice rink, and a cable car from the centre. Oz 3300, at 1,350 m, is a pedestrian, ski-in, ski-out station, with a gondola up from Allemond in the valley. Auris-en-Oisans is a small, south-facing station at 1,600 m, with its own 19 runs. Villard-Reculas, at about 1,500 m, is a small village on a sunny slope; its lift company gives its own sector as 12 runs and 16.6 km between 1,480 m and 2,115 m, served by eight lifts.

• Vaujany

  A village of about 350 people with a cable car into Alpe d'Huez's 250 km, a pool and ice rink, and its own Oz-Vaujany pass for the home slopes.

• Oz-en-Oisans

  A pedestrian ski-in, ski-out station about an hour from Grenoble, with a gondola from the valley and two more into Alpe d'Huez's 250 km.

• Auris-en-Oisans

  A small, south-facing station at 1,600 m where the shops, the ski school and the lifts are all close together, with Alpe d'Huez a chairlift away.

How the villages link

Alpe d'Huez sits in the middle, and each smaller village has its own lift up into the system. According to the member guides and the official pages they cite:

• Vaujany. The Alpette cable car leaves the village centre for Alpette at about 2,100 m, and a second cable car continues to the Dôme des Petites Rousses at 2,800 m. A gondola from La Villette climbs to the Montfrais plateau. The tourist office lists three routes home: the black La Fare run and the Enversin gondola, the Vaujanate run to the gondola's mid-station, or the La Villette–Montfrais gondola.
• Oz-en-Oisans. From Oz 3300, the Poutran gondola goes to Alpe d'Huez and the Alpette gondola to Alpette, Vaujany and the Dôme des Rousses. The long blue Chevreuils run brings you back to the station.
• Auris-en-Oisans. Chairlifts climb from the station into the wider area: the lift company names the Chalvet chairlift as the direct connection, and the tourist office names the Alpauris chairlift as the quick link to Alpe d'Huez. The Auris lift company says the Sarenne run finishes in Auris-en-Oisans village.
• Villard-Reculas. The Villarais chairlift reaches the Signal at 2,100 m in under eight minutes, the tourist office says, and from there you can ski down towards Alpe d'Huez. The lift company says the blue Les Vallons and Chemin du Pâtre runs lead back to the village, and the tourist office's piste-map page says the Signal gives access to nine runs, the Vallons among them.

The diagram follows those pages. Its overall layout was checked against the Espace Alpe d'Huez piste map for 2025-26, linked from the Oz tourist office, which shows Vaujany and Oz 3300 joined to Alpette, Villard-Reculas to the Signal, and Auris to the Alpe d'Huez side. The lift names were taken from the text sources, not read off the map. It simplifies Alpe d'Huez to a single point.

Skiing the Alpe d'Huez Grand Domaine

Official counts vary. SATA gives 250 km of linked pistes. The Auris tourist office adds 111 runs and 67 lifts; the Oz tourist office gives 100 runs and 68 lifts; the Vaujany tourist office gives 116 runs. All agree on the Pic Blanc at 3,330 m as the top.

The long descents start there. The Sarenne run drops from the Pic Blanc to the Gorges de Sarenne at 1,510 m over 16 km. The Oz tourist office describes a top-to-bottom route of 2,205 m of vertical, about an hour and a half without a lift, ending in the forest at L'Enversin d'Oz at 1,125 m. Pic Blanc access is booked in advance on the SATA site.

The smaller villages have their own sector skiing too: 53 km on the Oz-Vaujany side, the 19 runs at Auris and about a dozen at Villard-Reculas. Before crossing to the far side of the area, check the last lifts home on the day. The piste map online at the time of writing is for 2025-26.

Lift passes

SATA sells the full-area pass on its ski pass site, alongside sector passes. The Oz-Vaujany pass covers the west side; the Vaujany tourist office notes it does not include Pic Blanc 2, needed for the Sarenne. Auris and Villard-Reculas sell their own village passes and the full-area pass through their lift sites: Auris and Villard-Reculas.

If you will stay mostly on one side, compare the sector pass first. Prices change each season; check 2026/27 prices before you buy.

Getting there

The area is in the Oisans, south-east of Grenoble. The road in is the D1091 from Grenoble towards Le Bourg-d'Oisans. For Vaujany and Oz, turn off at Rochetaillée towards Allemond; for Auris, the tourist office advises carrying on to Le Freney-d'Oisans and taking the D211, not the narrow D211A from Le Bourg-d'Oisans. The Auris tourist office says that from 1 November to 31 March, cars need winter tyres or must carry chains or socks.

The Oz tourist office gives the distances from Oz 3300 as 95 km to Grenoble airport, 145 km to Lyon Saint-Exupéry and 200 km to Geneva. In winter, Transaltitude coaches run from Grenoble to the resorts; regional line T75 runs to Le Bourg-d'Oisans all year. Each village guide has the details.

When to go

Season dates for 2026/27 differ by source. SATA gives the Espace Alpe d'Huez as open from 5 December 2026 to 25 April 2027, as does the Villard-Reculas tourist office. The Auris tourist office's ski-area page gives 27 April 2027. For Auris itself, the tourist office gives the station's season as ending on 11 April and the lift company its local lifts as ending on 18 April. Check which lifts and links are open before booking a late-season week.

The villages sit between 1,250 m and 1,600 m, well below the Pic Blanc, so conditions at the bottom say little about the top. Use the official pages rather than any figure copied here:

• Vaujany webcams (tourist office)
• Oz-en-Oisans lifts and snow, live (tourist office)
• Espace Alpe d'Huez lift and piste openings (Auris tourist office)