Auli in December: What You Get, and What You Probably Will Not
We left Greater Noida for Auli at half past one in the morning on 24 January 2026, the day after that winter's first real snowfall. The December before it had been dry, the second dry December in four, and in only one of those four, 2024, did we find reports of people skiing before New Year. That record is what decides your trip.
We've never been to Auli in December. Our three trips were in October 2024, June 2025 and that January, and a trip in late January is no guide to December. So this page is built from the record of the last four Decembers: the district papers, the power utility's own figures, and the fares and tariffs somebody has put in writing.
It's for the reader who has already booked, or whose leave is fixed, or whose family picked the dates. We won't talk you out of it. We'll tell you what the month is made of, and what to do with it when the slope turns out brown.
Auli is in Uttarakhand, in Chamoli district, 11 to 16 km of road above Jyotirmath depending on the route, the town almost everyone still calls Joshimath. There's a second Auli in Himachal Pradesh, and some travel and weather sites send the name there, so check the state before you trust a December forecast.
| December | What the slope did | What the town did |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | No snowfall reached Auli in the month at all | 1,109 visitors counted that December, against 1,935 the December before |
| 2023 | Snow on 12 December, then nothing more until 17 to 18 January | Christmas and New Year ran on two-week-old, degrading snow |
| 2024 | The one that delivered. Snow from 8 December, a good fall on the night of the 23rd, tourists skiing on Christmas Day, 1 to 1.5 ft lying by the 30th | Hotels full to 2 January. 600 riders on the chairlift on Christmas Day. Frost had vehicles struggling at three bends on the 25th |
| 2025 | Dry. First usable snow didn't arrive until 23 January 2026 | GMVN sold out for 25 to 31 December by the 8th. Auli reported deserted on 2 January |
Will there be snow in Auli in December?
Probably not enough to ski on, going by the record. The three short Decembers in that table failed in different ways. One had no snow at all. One got a single fall on the 12th and then nothing for five weeks. One stayed dry until well past New Year.
The good one was 2024. Tourists were skiing on fresh snow on Christmas morning, and GMVN started its courses on 8 January. Even that season lost its national championship twice for lack of snow, so one good December in four is the most the record offers.
Santosh Kunwar of the Auli Skiing School puts the threshold in feet: half a foot is enough to teach a beginner, and a national event needs about four. A thin December lands in that gap, with enough white for photographs and too little for the thing you came to do.
A fall doesn't last, either. Rakesh Ranjan, a technical officer working the 2026 season, put the usable life of a snowfall at roughly 15 to 20 days: two feet of fresh snow compacts to about one, and after that it degrades. So snow that falls on 12 December is at the end of that life by New Year, which is what happened in 2023.
Some popular December guides say otherwise. One, updated in December 2025, promises "consistent snow cover" through mid to late December and ski slopes "fully operational" by the month's end.
The four winters are set out season by season, every date sourced, on the four-winter record on the best time page. That's the page to read if your dates can still move.
What is December at Auli like, week by week?
The first ten days are quiet and cheap, the middle fortnight is when the rooms go, and the last week is the most crowded and expensive of the year. December is three different months under one name.
In the first ten days rooms are cheap, the road is usually clear, and almost nobody is there. On 2 December 2025 Pioneer Edge ran a piece on Auli's declining footfall and the hardship it was bringing locals. If your dates can still move by even a few days, take this week over the last one: the same mountain and the same view at a lower room rate, on a road nobody is queuing on. What you give up is the New Year atmosphere, which at Auli means a hotel dining room.
The middle of the month is when the money moves. Bookings for the New Year block close in this window, long before anybody knows what the mountain will do. In 2025 GMVN's Auli property was sold out for 25 to 31 December by the 8th of the month, as its manager Pradeep Shah said on the record. That season's first usable snow fell on 23 January, more than six weeks after the rooms went.
When snow does land in December, the local trade reacts within days. On 15 December 2024, a week after that season's first fall, Chamoli's Hindi press had hotel owners, homestay operators and ski instructors talking up their Christmas and 31 December business.
Why is New Year week so expensive when the snow is so unreliable?
Because the crowd books on the calendar and the snow arrives on its own schedule, and in three of the last four years the two didn't meet. Christmas to New Year is Auli's peak week for rooms, road traffic and prices, whatever the slope is doing.
December 2024 was the good year. Auli's hotels were full to 2 January, according to GMVN's Auli manager, and more than 600 people rode the chairlift on Christmas Day, according to Deepak Dimri, the GMVN officer who runs it. The road strained that same week: frost formed on three bends of the climb and vehicles struggled at them.
December 2025 was the ordinary year. The rooms sold on the same calendar, and the snow didn't come. Guest houses filled, hotels ran at around 60 per cent, and the district press described visitors as disappointed by the missing snowfall. On 2 January, Chamoli's own coverage called Auli and Aizen Top deserted.
That's the spread you're booking into. Of the last four New Year weeks, one was excellent. In the others the slope was thin or bare. The crowd didn't always follow the snow: rooms sold out anyway in 2025, while the snowless December of 2022 drew about 43 per cent fewer visitors than the December before, on the counts in the table. Those counts sit two orders of magnitude below the state's published annual arrivals for Auli, so they're a counted subset of visitors, good for a ratio and nothing more.
One more thing about that week. Auli has no listed, year-round place to eat, so you rely on your hotel kitchen. Stalls appear on the snow paths in season, but they come and go with the weather, so don't plan a meal around them. A full house on 31 December means that kitchen is cooking at its limit, and if the road is misbehaving it's cooking whatever came up before the road closed.
What is open in Auli in December, and what is shut?
The chairlift inside Auli ran in each of the last two winters. The ropeway from Jyotirmath won't be back this one. It hasn't carried a passenger since January 2023. All ten of its towers were condemned after a technical survey, and the state's plan is a new line running past Auli to the Gorson slope in place of a repair. No restart date has been announced in the three and a half years since. So you go up by road, about 45 minutes to an hour from Jyotirmath. The whole story is on the ropeway's paper trail.
Three popular December guides we read in September 2026 still send you on the ropeway. One prints its hours, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and another was updated in April 2026, more than three years after the lift stopped.
The chairlift is a different machine. It's 800 m long, it sits inside Auli, and it costs Rs 500 a person, a fare GMVN raised from Rs 300 in February 2019 and hasn't revised since. The last hard evidence of it carrying passengers is from 25 January 2026, when its manager counted more than 1,200 riders in a day.
Badrinath is shut. The temple closed on 25 November in 2025, on 17 November in 2024 and on 18 November in 2023, so the road on beyond Jyotirmath isn't doing what it does in June.
There's no ATM at Auli and no fuel pump; both are down in Jyotirmath. Draw cash and fill the tank there, because in December you don't want to make that round trip twice.
Phone signal at Auli itself is reported good on all four networks. It drops once you're past the ski area and onto the trek routes, which is where the 3 to 4 km walk up to Gorson Bugyal goes, so tell the hotel before you set off.
How cold does it get, and what happens when the power goes?
Cold enough that heating is the thing to ask about, and heating at Auli runs on mains power that Chamoli loses regularly. It's the December question almost nobody answers, and it decides whether your nights are pleasant.
We don't publish a month-by-month temperature table for Auli. The ones we found all trace back to one private travel portal, with no weather station at Auli behind them, and their winter minima look mild for the altitude. What we have is one dated December figure that names Auli: a Dehradun weather desk put the night temperature at about minus 2 on 8 December 2025, with heavy frost forming overnight. That's early in the season. Pack for a good deal colder in the last week, and colder again on the upper slopes.
Now the power. Auli hangs off the Jyotirmath block's supply, which comes in on a 66 kV line from Karnaprayag and a 33 kV hydro line. On 31 August 2025 both failed together and the whole block went dark, with nothing else to keep it lit.
Uttarakhand's power corporation, UPCL, publishes its own reliability figures, and they're worth more than any hotel's marketing. In December 2025 the Gopeshwar division's rural feeders recorded 979 minutes of outage per customer across 25 separate interruptions, which works out to 16 hours 19 minutes in one month.
That figure has two limits. It's an average across the whole division, with no reading at Auli in it. And the division's reach is our inference: Gopeshwar is Chamoli's district headquarters, and a UPCL tender lists the Joshimath sub-division under it, but we haven't found an organisation chart that says so in as many words.
What guests report fits it. In every dated review we could find, positive and negative, the working heater at Auli is a mains device: an oil column heater, a blower, an electric blanket. None describes a generator carrying room heating through an outage, and the one guest who tested the question found no generator at all.
Our own October 2024 hotels are the only other evidence we have. At both, the Kailasha Inn in Jyotirmath and a resort at Lower Auli, the room heater was set up to run on the power backup, though we have no power cut on record at either. That was October, though, and neither place is at the top, so it tells you nothing about a December night up there.
A visitor at a property on the Auli slope in February 2023 wrote that the lights went off during snowfall and, in her words, "we all panicked as we thought we will freeze now due to cold and no heater". Staff brought hot water bags to the beds. That's the failure mode, described by somebody it happened to.
Heating is usually an extra. Five guest reports from two properties, the dated ones from 2020 to 2022, describe room heaters as chargeable. One property on the road just below Auli, about 3 km short of the top by its own description, publishes its price: an electric heater at Rs 1,000 per room per night, on top of the room.
When the power goes, the water usually goes with it, because it's pumped. A guest who stayed through heavy snow at GMVN's Jyotirmath complex in January 2019 reported no electricity and no water supply in the rooms. That's the town below, on the same block and the same supply.
What does the Jyotirmath to Auli road do in December?
It ices up at three named bends, and nothing about it is published in advance. With the ropeway out, the climb from Jyotirmath is your only way up, so it's worth knowing even in a month when it usually behaves.
On 25 December 2024, with the good season's snow on the ground, frost formed at TV Tower, Kichad Band and Rock Climbing Band. Vehicles had serious trouble at those bends, and the report is specific that the trouble was both going up and coming down. The BRO spread soil over the ice with a JCB, and police stood along the route to help push vehicles through.
Thirteen months later, when the road was restricted through the last week of January 2026, TV Tower and Kichad Bend were two of the three frost points named again. The third was Sunil. Our hotel that week was at Sunil, by the TV Tower, still below the top.
We reached Jyotirmath at 17:45 on 24 January 2026. Our trip sheet for that evening says "road khulne ka wait": we had dinner and tea in Jyotirmath and waited five hours for the road to open. The reports for that day say it had closed after vehicles skidded on the snow, then reopened to four-wheel drives only. At 23:00 we drove our Thar up, and we checked in at 01:20. We were inside that exemption, so our climb says nothing about whether a hatchback would have got up that night.
None of it can be looked up in advance. We couldn't find a single order, notice or advisory for the January 2026 restrictions, on the district site or with the state police, the disaster authority, tourism, GMVN or the PWD. The PWD's own road-closure list logged 111 closures across the state that winter, ten of them in Chamoli, and not one on this road. The road crews clear it and the police restrict it, and a checkpoint decision never becomes a closure record.
So ring your hotel or the Jyotirmath taxi stand on the morning you're going up and ask what the road did overnight. The January 2026 week is laid out day by day on the page on that last climb, and the long drive up from the plains is on the drive from Delhi.
What does a December trip to Auli actually cost?
Three prices at Auli have been put in writing with a date: the taxi up from Jyotirmath, the chairlift, and the rooms at one property just below Auli. Everything else on this mountain is negotiated.
| What | Figure | When it was set |
|---|---|---|
| Jyotirmath to Auli taxi, one way | Rs 1,500 | 29 December 2024, by the SDM Jyotirmath |
| Same, there and back in a day | Rs 2,500 | Same order, five passengers to a vehicle |
| Chairlift inside Auli, per person | Rs 500 | February 2019, by GMVN. Never revised since |
| A room at one property just below Auli, normal winter night | Rs 3,500 | Its own published tariff |
| Same room, 20 December to 5 January | Rs 3,800 | Its own published peak rate |
| Electric heater at that property, per night | Rs 1,000 | Charged on top of the room |
Look at what that room premium is charged on. The one property near Auli publishing a peak rate lifts it across a fixed window, 20 December to 5 January, set months ahead of any forecast. You pay the New Year price for the date, whatever the snow does, and the room is gone before anyone knows.
The taxi fare comes with a caveat. December 2024 is the last time an official put a rupee figure on this road. The same office renewed the whole arrangement on 19 December 2025 and named no number at all, telling operators to display rate lists instead. So the fare in the table is the last rate anybody in authority published, and what you're quoted may differ.
We did this climb by shared jeep in June 2025, after the bus from Delhi, but we didn't note down what we paid. The wording of the order, the per-vehicle reading and every other figure we found are on the Jyotirmath taxi fare page.
The fare and its renewal both came in December, the month the crowd arrives, and it's the only month anyone has written down a price for this road. The administration acts in other months too: in March 2025 the same SDM's office closed Auli to tourists outright on a weather alert. And on 27 December 2024, in the week the fare was fixed, the District Magistrate of Chamoli, Sandeep Tiwari, ordered every school and Anganwadi centre in the district shut for the following day. He did it on a forecast of heavy snowfall above 2,500 m, which is where Auli's own range starts.
Gear and course fees belong on the skiing costs page. For a December booking, a day rate answers the "is there enough snow" problem better than a multi-day course does.
What do you do at Auli in December when there's no snow?
Walk, look, and go down the hill for the afternoon. Gorson Bugyal is the walk to plan around: a high meadow roughly 3 to 4 km each way above the top of the slopes, three to five hours there and back, free, and it needs no guide in clear weather. The chairlift takes out the bottom third of the climb.
The view doesn't depend on the snow. Nanda Devi and the wider Garhwal wall are there in every month, and December air is clear. A bad December changes the colour of the ground and leaves the view alone.
Spend the second day below Auli. On our October 2024 trip we spent a whole day sightseeing around Jyotirmath, between two nights at the Kailasha Inn on Badrinath Road. In December the town has something October doesn't: Badrinath's winter worship moves down to Yog Badri at Pandukeshwar and to the Narsingh Temple in Jyotirmath itself, and the Shankaracharya Math and the Kalpavriksha are a short walk from the temple. It's a December-only reason to be in this valley, snow or no snow.
If you're sleeping in Jyotirmath, build the snowless morning into the plan from the start: breakfast in town, the Narsingh Temple, then up the hill late in the morning once any frost has come off the road. If the snow did arrive you've lost nothing, and if it didn't you were never relying on it.
Two things to leave alone. Operators advertise snow tubing, ziplining, ATV rides and zorbing at Auli, and we found no evidence that any of them run, so don't build a trip around them. And the artificial lake is a snowmaking reservoir that takes about twenty minutes to see.
That snowmaking is the obvious question in a bad December. The machines were installed in 2010-11 and have never been used for the job they were bought for. A March 2025 report described them as showpieces, coverage of a local protest movement in January 2026 called the system non-functional, and no statement we found says whether they could be brought back into service. If a page tells you Auli has artificial snow as a backup, nothing we could find supports it.
Should you move a December booking?
Vandana says move it, if you booked December to ski and the forecast a week out is dry. Most properties will shift your dates more easily than they'll refund you, and late January is a better bet on the record.
Nav's point is that most people asking can't. The leave is approved, the tickets are bought, and a hotel that will shift your dates won't shift your flights.
Where we agree: if your dates can move and skiing is the whole point, move them to late January or February. If they can't, go, and plan a trip with no skiing in it: the chairlift, the meadow walk, a night in Jyotirmath so the trip has somewhere to go, and no refreshing the forecast. Either way, don't pay in advance for a multi-day ski course before anyone knows there's snow to use it on.
Who should not book Auli for December
If you need snow on fixed dates, December at Auli is the wrong bet. Better to hear it here than after the long drive up, standing on a bare slope.
Nor is it a place for anyone who already skis beyond beginner level. Auli is about 3 km of slopes, roughly 83 per cent of it graded easy and none of it graded difficult: a good place to learn and a dull one if you can already turn. Gulmarg has more terrain, and that's the reason to go there, though its snow comes with no promise either.
If mobility is a real constraint, know that with the gondola gone there's no step-free way up, and the road is the only route. And if you want somewhere to go in the evening, nothing is listed up there beyond the hotels, and in December it gets dark early and cold fast.
One more, and it's a health point. Auli sits above 2,500 m, which is roughly where altitude illness becomes possible, and driving straight up from the plains in a day is the way people get caught. Spend the first night at Jyotirmath, about 1,875 m, a textbook intermediate stop; our October 2024 trip ran that way. Being fit doesn't protect you. This is general information, and it isn't medical advice.
Auli in December: FAQ
Will there be snow in Auli in December?
Don't count on it. In the last four Decembers, 2022 had no snow at all and 2025 none until 23 January 2026. In 2023 snow fell on the 12th and then stopped for five weeks. Only 2024 delivered: snow from 8 December and tourists skiing on fresh snow on Christmas Day, and even that season never held enough for the national championship. One good December in four is the record to plan around.
How cold is Auli in December?
Cold enough that the heating in your room matters more than the number. The one dated December figure we could find that names Auli specifically is a night temperature of about minus 2, reported on 8 December 2025 with heavy frost forming. We don't publish a month-by-month temperature table, because every version of it we found traces back to one private travel portal, with no weather station at Auli behind it, and its winter minima look too mild for the altitude. Pack for colder than any average you read, especially in the last week and on the upper slopes.
Is the Auli ropeway working in December?
No. The Joshimath to Auli ropeway hasn't carried a passenger since January 2023, and no reopening date has been announced at any point since. All ten towers were condemned, and the state's plan is a new line extending to the Gorson slope in place of a repair. Several popular December guides still publish its operating hours and its fare. The 800 m chairlift inside Auli is a different machine: it ran in each of the last two winters, and it costs Rs 500 per person.
I have already booked Auli for December, should I cancel?
Not on our account. If your dates can still move and skiing is the entire reason for the trip, late January or February is a better bet on the evidence. If they can't move, go, and build the trip around the chairlift, the Gorson Bugyal walk and a morning in Jyotirmath. The one thing we wouldn't do is pay in advance for a multi-day ski course before anyone knows whether there's snow to use it on.
Is Auli crowded in December?
Only in the last week, and then very. Christmas to New Year is the peak of Auli's winter, with rooms selling out weeks ahead and traffic backing up on the climb from Jyotirmath. The first ten days of December are the opposite: cheap, quiet and usually clear on the road. If your dates are at all flexible, the start of the month gives you the same mountain without the crush.
Does the road to Auli close in December?
It can, and nothing about it is published in advance. On 25 December 2024 frost formed at TV Tower, Kichad Band and Rock Climbing Band and vehicles struggled at those bends going both up and down, with the BRO spreading soil over the ice. We couldn't find any order, notice or advisory for restrictions on this road, and the PWD's own road-closure list logged nothing for it across a whole winter. Ring your hotel or the Jyotirmath taxi stand on the morning you travel and ask what the road did overnight.
Is Auli open in December?
Yes. Auli itself has no season and no closing date, the hotels run, and the chairlift was carrying riders in each of the last two winters. What is shut in December is Badrinath, further up the same road, which closed on 25 November in 2025. The ropeway has been shut since January 2023 for reasons that have nothing to do with the season. No year-round restaurant, ATM or fuel pump is listed at Auli in any month, so "open" here means your hotel is open.
How much does a December trip to Auli cost?
The figures with dates on them are the transfer and the lift. A taxi up from Jyotirmath was fixed at Rs 1,500 one way and Rs 2,500 for a same-day return on 29 December 2024, five passengers to a vehicle, and no official has named a figure since. The chairlift is Rs 500 per person, set in February 2019. For rooms, one property on the road just below Auli publishes Rs 3,500 a night rising to Rs 3,800 between 20 December and 5 January, with an electric heater at Rs 1,000 per room per night on top of that.
What is there to do in Auli in December without snow?
The walk up to Gorson Bugyal is the main one, roughly 3 to 4 km each way from the top of the slopes, three to five hours return, free and needing no guide in clear weather. The chairlift takes out the bottom third of the climb. The Himalayan view does not depend on snow, and December air is clear. Below Auli, the Narsingh Temple in Jyotirmath holds Badrinath's winter worship while that temple is closed, which is a December-only reason to be in this valley.
What we couldn't verify
- Whether any generator at any Auli property powers room heaters, as opposed to lights, corridors and reception. No hotel or guest we found addresses it. It's the question that decides the night, and it still needs a phone call.
- Whether the chairlift is running this winter, and whether its Rs 500 covers the ride back down. The last hard evidence of riders is 25 January 2026. Two travel sites say the fare covers the return; GMVN publishes no rate card, so we can't confirm it.
- A December room rate from GMVN's own booking pages. The tariff pages for its three Auli properties wouldn't open for us, so we haven't published a GMVN December rate, and we haven't put an aggregator's price in its place.
- Any temperature record for Auli, as opposed to single readings. We have one dated December reading that names Auli, and no station series or IMD product for Auli or Jyotirmath that we could reach.
- Any seasonal snow outlook for Auli, from anybody. None exists that we could find, which is itself the answer to what December 2026 will do: there's nothing to check before you book.
- Whether frost restrictions ever apply to vehicles coming down. The December 2024 report describes difficulty in both directions, but difficulty isn't a restriction, and no source addresses descent.
- 2026-27 carnival dates and GMVN's 2026-27 course fees. Neither was published as of 9 September 2026.
Going to Auli this December?
Send your dates to hello@wctoindia.com and we'll tell you what the last four Decembers did with that same week, and what we'd check before the drive up. If you've been to Auli in a recent December, tell us what you found and we'll credit you by name.
Sources
The four Decembers: 2022, Amar Ujala, 16 Feb 2023 and its December visitor counts in Amar Ujala Chamoli, 24 Jan 2023, for which we have the figures but no working link; 2023, Aajtak, 13 Dec 2023 and Amar Ujala, 18 Jan 2024; 2024, Aajtak, 30 Dec 2024 and Pioneer Edge, 18 Mar 2025; 2025, ETV Bharat, 2 Jan 2026. Christmas 2024 at Auli, the 600 chairlift riders, the hotels full to 2 January and the frost at TV Tower, Kichad Band and Rock Climbing Band: Amar Ujala Chamoli, 26 Dec 2024. The December 2025 sell-out: Amar Ujala, 8 Dec 2025, and the 60 per cent occupancy that followed: Amar Ujala, 22 Dec 2025. The renewal of the Ravigram parking arrangement, which named no fare: Amar Ujala, 20 Dec 2025. Auli's minus 2 night on 8 December 2025: Zee News Hindi, 8 Dec 2025. The school closure of 28 December 2024 and DM Sandeep Tiwari: ETV Bharat, 27 Dec 2024. The taxi fare: Amar Ujala Chamoli, 29 Dec 2024. The January 2026 road: Chamoli SP Surjeet Singh Pawar on the 4x4-only reopening, via ANI, 24 Jan 2026; the frost at Sunil, TV Tower and Kichad Bend and the 1,200 chairlift riders, Amar Ujala Chamoli, 25 Jan 2026; the winter's closures, the PWD road-closure list for 1 Dec 2025 to 31 Mar 2026, checked 8 Sep 2026. Our own January 2026 evening in Jyotirmath and our October 2024 hotels: our trip records. The half-foot beginner threshold and the four feet a national event needs, Santosh Kunwar of the Auli Skiing School: Scroll.in, 18 Mar 2025. Slope length and grading: skiresort.com, whose slope figures we use and whose operating status we do not, because it still lists the ropeway as running. The chairlift fare and its 2019 revision: Amar Ujala, 6 Feb 2019. December 2025 power reliability: UPCL, Distribution System Reliability Indices, Dec 2025, Annexure A(ii). The Jyotirmath block supply failure: ETV Bharat, 31 Aug 2025. The early-December quiet and the footfall decline: Pioneer Edge, 2 Dec 2025. Snow-making machines never used: ETV Bharat, 15 Jan 2026. The 15 to 20 day skiable life of a snowfall, Rakesh Ranjan: ETV Bharat, 29 Jan 2026. The December guides still promising snow cover and the ropeway, all read 9 Sep 2026: StayVista, tripplannersindia and Veena World. Tourists skiing on Christmas Day 2024: Amar Ujala Chamoli, 26 Dec 2024; GMVN's courses from 8 January 2025: Amar Ujala Chamoli, 8 Jan 2025. No paid links and no affiliate links appear on this page.
Changelog
- First published.
- Rewritten around our own trips. Corrected the December record: tourists were skiing at Auli on Christmas Day 2024, so three of the last four Decembers were short of snow, not four. Took out a wrong 25 km for the road on from Jyotirmath to Badrinath, and a line calling Christmas week the one with the least snow, which the 2024 row contradicts.