Skiers’ paradise of pistes and peaks

Published Feb 10, 2016

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Bern - A lot of ski chat is about numbers. Total vertical, snow depth, skiable kilometres, altitude – if you can measure it, it counts.

Well, there’s a super-stylish Alpine hotel – more of a restaurant with rooms – perfectly positioned a mere 10m from the ski lift. Yet this particular measurement doesn’t matter a bit. When you step out of the door in the morning, you’re at the top.

Set high above the Valais resort of Crans-Montana, the first incarnation of this 1963 gondola station decanted four generations of skiers at 2 100m into the midst of the sparkling, peak-filled panorama crowning the Rhone Valley above Sierre. It was consigned to the scrapheap in 2001 when a new lift was built nearby, but the severe brick edifice was reborn eight years later as Chetzeron, a sophisticated mountain restaurant. Today, it offers a bed for the night, too.

There are two ways to check in. The first is by ski or foot along a blue piste called Cry d’Er. Your bags arrive by snowmobile. I used a more adventurous route. Because I arrived in Crans-Montana after the lifts had stopped running, I hopped on the piste basher express.

With the back loaded with boxes of wine and food supplies, owner Sami Lamaa and I bundled into the heated snowcat and ploughed uphill, headlights illuminating a forest bouncing with deer and rabbits. Half an hour later we alighted on a deserted mountain top – the only sound the crunch of snow beneath our boots, the only sight between 65 and 75 stars twinkling in the velvet black sky. Lamaa should know, he’d done the counting.

“The basis of Chetzeron is to cut people off from reality and cellphones,” he said later as we warmed ourselves beside a fire with a glass of wine. “To cut people off from reality these days is difficult.”

I was an easy conquest. To my embarrassment, my reality was cut off until well after 10am, in a stupor the length and depth of my king-size bed. When I finally awoke, sunshine was ricocheting off a hundred peaks and the first skiers were schussing past my door.

It seemed a shame to rush out without accepting a late feast of fresh pain au chocolat, fruit salad and superb coffee, and I was keen to indulge in a little soak in the deep, two-man tub, beneath a huge picture window. So I did.

And if the windows appear perfectly oriented to the views, they are. Chinese Taoist monks were invited up during a visit to Switzerland to consult on the feng shui of the redesign. “They ran up the mountain like goats without shoes,” says Lamaa, “and they found good energy here.”

Recharged and renewed, I stepped straight from the terrace into Crans-Montana’s 140km of pistes and 27 lifts. I made my way up to Bellalui, and down to the Nationale slope, host to high-speed skiers like the Swiss Didier Cuche and American star Lynsey Vonn during the International Ski Federation Alpine World Cup.

Far below, the village sits on a sunny shelf at 1 500m. It forms the lower border of skiable terrain, and lifts rise to a top altitude of 3 000m.

Known in the Sixties and Seventies for its jet-set clientele, Crans-Montana’s star seemed to be receding. But a reported investment of one billion Swiss francs (R16bn) has been injecting new life.

Hotels such as the five-star Guarda Golf and new chalets that include elegant Crans Luxury Lodges and fit-for-a-tsar Chalet Seven have attracted newcomers. Even Roger Moore abandoned his beloved Gstaad to spend winters here.

When I arrived back for lunch from my tour of the Plaine-Morte Glacier and a mosey down a 10km piste, I encountered British chef Heston Blumenthal tucking into a shared plate of venison sausage.

The terrace and restaurant were heaving with skiers enjoying fragrant, slow-cooked beef with fried gnocchi, lamb stew with thyme and polenta, and lashings of fantastic wine produced at the foot of the Valais garden.

Best of all, there’s no need to leave. Your bed’s turned down, and it – and the lift – are just steps away.

 

If You Go...

Hotel Chetzeron (00 41 2 7485 0800; chetzeron.ch)

Momentum Ski (020 7371 9111; momentumski.com)

More information

crans-montana.ch;

myswitzerland.com

The Independent

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