Higher powder

Luxury ski resorts are climbing further up the mountains to make sure guests are greeted with snowy slopes

It’s been a difficult season for many ski resorts. Initial snow melted just as the crowds were arriving, and though plenty fell later, the pictures of bare slopes once again focussed attention on the possibility that apart from the highest locations, skiing may one day soon disappear from the Alps.

It’s a scenario the ski industry has been responding to for decades and indeed many resorts were planned and built according to the ‘higher is better’ philosophy. In Les Arcs, for instance, that process can be charted in the heights incorporated into the name of each resort. The original, Arc 1600, dates from 1968, with the plans for this resort and several like it being drawn up in the early 1960s when a lack of snow was causing trouble for moderate-altitude resorts. The “Plan Neige”, which was formulated in 1964, saw 20 development sites identified as being suitable “high altitude ski resorts that must be rational, functional and effective”.

Many of these are household names today, and several are loved not only for their skiing but also for their architecture. In Flaine, for instance, the vision was that of Bauhaus master Marcel Breuer (also responsible for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and the Whitney Museum in New York). Avoriaz meanwhile was designed by Jacques Labro (see ‘Avoriaz: Creative peak’ at businesstraveller.com).