Hauteclaire · 45.62°N, 6.65°E · Savoie
One hundred and forty-two kilometres of piste above a village of four hundred and ten people. The lifts open at 08:45, the north faces hold cold snow until March, and the last run home lands you at the hotel door.
Which is why the season runs to the third week of April without a snow cannon on the top half.
One continuous descent from the glacier shoulder to the church square, on La Traverse.
Ninety-one of them work on the mountain. Marc Thévenet has run the pisteurs since 2009.
Bought from the Vaudray barrage, eleven kilometres down the valley, since November 2021.
01 The light engine
Real solar geometry for 45.62°N on 14 February 2026 — declination, hour angle, altitude and azimuth. Move the hour and the sky, the shadows, the temperature and the whole page change with it.
Aiguille de Vaudray 3,140 m · looking south from the Praz terrace · Alpenglow
L'embrasement — alpenglow
17:25
Solar position is computed live from the day number, latitude and the equation of time; sunrise lands at 07:45 and sunset at 17:51, which is what the pisteurs' board says too. Temperature uses a diurnal curve on a 0.62 °C per 100 m lapse rate.
Sunrise 07:45 · Solar noon 12:48 · Sunset 17:51
02 Plan the day
Choose an ability, tap the runs you fancy — on the map or in the list — and the planner totals the vertical, the distance, the descent time and the lift time for the whole loop.
Altitude profile of the day
Nothing chosen yet. Pick a run to start building the day.
Eleven signature descents out of the seventy-eight marked runs, each with its real top and bottom stations.
03 Snow report · updated 06:10 today
Measured at five stakes between the church square and the glacier shoulder, by hand, every morning before the lifts turn. No modelled averages.
Settled depth at each measuring stake, in centimetres. The 3,140 m stake sits on the glacier shoulder and is read by the lift mechanic on the first ride up.
Saturday 14 February
Cold and clear after the Thursday night fall. Light north-westerly on the ridge, stripping the windward side of the Combe — take the sheltered Belvédère line for the best of it.
04 Lift passes
Sterling, all taxes in, no booking fee. Under-fives and over-eighties ski free and always have — they just need a photo at the ticket office.
The beginners' option covers the four village lifts and the Névé drag. It ignores the days discount because nobody needs a six-day pass for a nursery slope, and it replaces the area price entirely.
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Choose a party and a length of stay.
Hold these passes05 The hotel · 31 rooms, 4 chalets
Built in 1961 as a lift-workers' hostel, stripped back and rebuilt in 2022 by Atelier Ferrand of Annecy. Every window on this page shows the hour you left it on.
01 South face
Twenty-two square metres, a four-metre run of glass and nothing between you and the Aiguille. Larch floors, a wool-felt headboard and blackout that actually works at 06:00.
02 Over the village
The quiet side, looking down on the church and the télécabine queue you are not standing in. Two beds, a proper desk, and a drying cupboard hot enough to save a pair of gloves overnight.
03 Under the eaves
The old hostel attic, now forty square metres with a wood burner, a bath under the roof light and a view straight up the Vaudray glacier. Two nights minimum in high season.
04 In the pines
Four separate chalets in the larch behind the hotel, each with its own sauna, a kitchen you can actually cook in, and a ski-in track back to the Praz gondola. Weekly lets, Saturday to Saturday.
06 School, table, spa
Everything below is booked at the desk by a person who knows the mountain, not through a call centre in another country.
Jules Perrin has taught here for nineteen winters and hires nobody who cannot ski the Face Nord on a bad day. Adult groups meet at the Praz gondola at 09:15 and finish at 12:15; children go to the Névé plateau, which is fenced, flat and out of the wind.
Off-piste and touring days run with a qualified mountain guide and a maximum of four, transceiver, shovel and probe included. We will not take you into the couloirs at risk 4, whatever your holiday is costing you.
Book at least a week ahead for the February half-term. Everything runs in English and in French.
Six people maximum, sorted by ability on the Monday, three hours a day. Most people move up a level by the Thursday.
Full days on the Névé plateau with lunch at the Cabane, and a race on Friday afternoon with a numbered bib nobody ever throws away.
Two hours minimum, up to four people at no extra cost. The fastest way to fix a habit you have had for fifteen years.
One guide, four skiers, safety kit and a route chosen that morning from the avalanche bulletin. Includes the Vaudray funicular ticket.
Beaufort from the Coopérative de Vaudray, trout from the hatchery at Pont-Sereine, lamb from the Charbonnier farm four kilometres down the road. The menu changes on a Tuesday because that is when the deliveries come up.
Dinner is at 19:30 in one sitting, which sounds severe and turns out to be the best hour of the day. Non-residents are welcome when there is room — ring by noon.
Vegetarian and coeliac menus are cooked properly, not assembled from the side dishes. Tell us when you book.
Four courses, one sitting, no choice on the main — which is how the kitchen keeps it this good with five people in it.
Halfway up, on the sunny side of the plateau. Diots in white wine, a tartiflette that will end your afternoon, and the best terrace at 2,100 m.
The old lift-workers' canteen by the gondola. Coffee from 07:00, soup at noon, and a genepi at four that you did not order.
Thursdays only. Last funicular up at 18:30, dinner in the old mechanics' hut at 2,900 m, head torches down the piste at 21:00 with a pisteur.
The bath house sits behind the hotel over the old boiler room, heated by the same ground-source loop that warms the bedrooms. Outdoor pool at 37 °C, a hammam, two saunas and a plunge tank fed straight from the Vaudray torrent at about 4 °C.
Included for every hotel guest, every day, from 15:00. Massage treatments are extra and book out by Wednesday, so ask on arrival.
Children until 17:00; adults only after that. Swimming costumes required in the pool, not in the saunas.
Outdoor 37 °C pool, hammam, dry and bio saunas, torrent plunge and a heated stone bench that sees the alpenglow at ten past five.
Deep work on quads and calves with arnica and mountain pine. Elodie books the 17:30 slot for herself and will not tell you why.
Breathwork, hot stones and compression for anyone arriving from sea level and skiing at 3,000 m the same afternoon.
Three hours in the bath house, a bowl of soup and a towel. The only day we let the valley in, and it is worth the drive up.
07 Mountain care
Published every June with the commune's accounts, audited by Bureau Alpin Vérité of Chambéry. The uncomfortable figures are on the list as well.
All 21 lifts and the snowmaking plant run on power bought from the Vaudray barrage, contracted to 2034.
All of it below 2,200 m, all of it drawing from a lined reservoir refilled by spring melt, never from the drinking supply.
New lances, better timing and a decision to stop making snow on two low runs that never held it.
On the old Étroits scar, with the Office National des Forêts. Fourteen per cent did not take; we replanted in 2025.
Via Moûtiers and the valley shuttle. Book the transfer with your room and it is £18 return, not £40 in a taxi.
The honest number. The bottom 300 m of vertical is the part we are losing, and we say so.
08 Guests · winter 2025/26
Collected at check-out, published unedited apart from the spelling of Vaudray, which nobody gets right first time.
“We came for the skiing and stayed up talking about the light. On the Wednesday the whole valley went orange for about nine minutes and the entire terrace stopped mid-sentence.”
“Two beginners and a teenager who thinks he is Marcel Hirscher. All three came back happy every single day, which I did not think was mathematically possible.”
“The Face Nord is the real thing and the guiding is properly professional — they turned us round on the Tuesday and were right to. Village is small; bring a book for the evening.”
09 Practical
If yours is not here, ring the desk on +44 20 3901 6620 — the UK line rings through to reception in the valley and a person picks it up.
Fly to Geneva and take the shared transfer we book with your room: two hours five minutes to the village square, £18 each way. By train, the Eurostar and TGV get you to Moûtiers by teatime and the valley shuttle meets the 17:04 every Saturday in season. Driving from Calais is about nine hours; the last eleven kilometres are hairpins, and from December to April you need winter tyres by law and a set of chains in the boot.
Genuinely, yes. The Névé plateau at 2,100 m is a fenced, gently graded shelf served by a covered magic carpet and one drag lift, and it sits above the cloud on the grey days when the village is in fog. Two of our three green runs are up there, so a first-timer is not sharing a nursery slope with people arriving at speed. The beginners' pass at £14 a day covers all of it.
Eighty-four per cent of the piste sits above 1,800 m and the glacier runs hold snow from November, so the top of the mountain is reliable in a way the bottom is not. If fewer than half the lifts are turning on the day you arrive, we refund the difference between the pass you bought and the pass that is actually usable, automatically, to the card you paid with. We do not make you ask.
From every run on the mountain except Les Étroits, which finishes at the 1,700 m station and needs one short chairlift to get home. La Traverse comes out forty metres from the boot room door. In the morning the Praz gondola is a two-minute walk, or ninety seconds if you leave breakfast when Élodie tells you to.
No, and we would rather be honest about why: bundling them means people who take a rest day pay for a pass they do not use. Price yours in the calculator above, buy it at the desk when you arrive, and if the weather ruins a day mid-week we will credit that day against your next visit. Passes are on a reusable card, £2 refundable deposit.
The bulletin is posted at 07:30 in the village square, at both mid-stations and on the board by the boot room. Above risk 3 the marked itinéraires close and stay closed; guided off-piste stops entirely at risk 4. Every guided day includes a transceiver, shovel and probe and a search drill on the first morning, which takes twenty minutes and is not optional.
Dogs are welcome in the four chalets and in six of the thirty-one hotel rooms, £16 a night, and there is a hose and a drying rail in the boot room. They can ride the Praz gondola outside peak hours with a muzzle, and there are eleven kilometres of prepared winter walking paths from the mid-station. Not on the pistes when the lifts are turning, for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has seen a labrador meet a snowboarder.
Winter 2026/27 · opens 12 December
Rooms for the 2026/27 season open on 1 September 2026. Tell us the week you want and we will hold it for seven days, no card, no deposit.