Alpe du Grand Serre
A 14-lift Isère resort topping out at over 2,100 m that shut its lifts on 28 September 2025 - the first French Alpine ski area of real altitude to be closed by the economics of a shortening winter.
- Region
- Isère
- Country
- France
- Status
- closed
- Year opened
- 1938
- Year closed
- 2025
- Reason for closure
- Accumulated operating deficits and a warming climate. An 18 million euro financing plan for the ski domain could not be closed, and on 24 June 2025 the Matheysine communauté de communes and SATA Group confirmed the resort would not reopen for the winter of 2026. The lifts stopped on 28 September 2025. A first closure announcement in October 2024 had been staved off for one more season.
History
The Alpe du Grand Serre sits above the village of La Morte in the Isère, some 50 km south of Grenoble, and was created in 1938. It was not a marginal hill: 14 lifts, 35 to 38 marked pistes over roughly 55 km, and 816 m of vertical from a 1,368 m base to 2,184 m at the top. That is what made its closure a landmark - it is generally reported as the first French Alpine domain reaching above 2,100 m to be shut down, where earlier casualties had been low-altitude areas. Deficits accumulated, snow cover became less dependable at the lower levels, and an 18 million euro financing package for the ski area could not be assembled. A closure was first announced in October 2024 and then deferred for a final season. On 24 June 2025 the Matheysine communauté de communes and the operator SATA Group confirmed the domain would not reopen for winter 2026, and the lifts ran for the last time on 28 September 2025. The village was left, in the words of one resident quoted at the time, with no vision of the future, and the commune is now working on a four-season model without alpine skiing. There is a direct link to another entry in this dataset: parts of the Tibannes chairlift from the abandoned Saint-Honoré 1500, a few valleys away, were bought in 2005 to extend the Alpe du Grand Serre's Souriou chairlift. A consolidated list of the individual lifts and pistes is not available in accessible sources.
Lifts
| Name | Type | Manufacturer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unnamed lift | Chairlift | One of three chairlifts in the 14-lift fleet. Individual names, manufacturers and build years are not compiled in accessible sources; the TSF4 Souriou was extended in 2005 using parts recovered from the Tibannes chairlift at nearby Saint-Honoré 1500 | |
| Unnamed lift | Chairlift | Second of the three chairlifts | |
| Unnamed lift | Chairlift | Third of the three chairlifts | |
| Unnamed lift | Surface lift | The resort had eleven surface lifts alongside the chairlifts, making 14 installations in total, all stopped on 28 September 2025 |
Sources and further reading
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpe_du_Grand_Serre
- https://www.outside.fr/fermeture-de-lalpe-du-grand-serre-une-premiere-pour-un-domaine-alpin-culminant-pourtant-a-2-141-m/
- https://reporterre.net/Aucune-vision-d-avenir-un-village-desempare-par-l-arret-de-sa-station-de-ski
- https://www.mountainwilderness.fr/communiques-de-presse/fermeture-alpe-grand-serre
More in France
Location
45.0239, 5.8622