EDGE OF REASON

There is another side of skiing in France beyond the resorts of Chamonix and Megève. Toby Skinner revisits the 1960s Brutalist ski towns of Avoriaz and Flaine and finds a design ethos that was way ahead of its time.

- Toby Skinner

At the end of a winding road from Morzine, the first view of Avoriaz is of the red cedar buildings of La Falaise, perched on the edge of a monumental cliff like some warped cruise ship. The resort itself resembles a retro-futuristic parallel universe. Clanking quasi-industrial lifts navigate the surface of the high-rises, all weird angles and portholes caked in snow, disgorging skiers into long external corridors. Horses and carts jingle across the snow. On the afternoon runs of the Dromonts ski lift, half the skiers have groceries from the Sherpa supermarket or rounds of Reblochon from the Aux Delices d’Antan. Life here is on skis.

I first visited with my parents aged around nine, staying in a poky Pierre & Vacances apartment with stucco walls like miniature mountainscapes, then again just after university, when it looked even stranger in the 2am half-light after a night of absinthe and enforced table dancing to Ricky Martin at Le Shooters. Despite that, I’m fond of the place, partly because it works seamlessly, with everywhere in the car-free town easily reachable on skis, and because the skiing is great—from sweeping powder fields to the dizziest of red runs. But more than that, I love its egalitarian hedonism and madcap creativity; the completeness of its faintly surreal vision, from the needle-like church/tourist office to the tropical-kitsch Aquariaz water park.