“You should be so proud,” Chemmy Alcott said as my face hit the thick snow for the third time and my glasses began to steam up from the constant effort of correcting myself. “You are one of the first 100 people to come here this season. “You smooth the path, you make it easier for everyone else.”
Alcott, once an Olympic roller-coaster ninja and now enthusiastic co-host of the BBC’s Ski Market programme, had issued a warning and then directed us to one of his secret shows in the Tignes area, Hidden Valley. “This is off-piste,” he said, suddenly serious. “So you do this at your own risk.”
As we shivered down the serpentine path, about the width of a tea tray, we quickly realized that it wasn’t actually a valley at all: it was rather a narrow, winding gorge, flanked by sheer-edged rocks and dotted with bristles. He was falling so high that even Alcott couldn’t get off without taking off his skis.
“What a sweet morning,” he said cheerfully, as the sunlight filtered through the pines around us. That wouldn’t be my word, especially when the track veers off into a delightful snow-covered forest. I gained an advantage and eventually flipped my way down the mountain, nearly taking down some snowshoe hikers heading up. “The runs we did to get here,” Alcott said when I finally caught up, “were beautiful and fun, but they weren’t memorable. This is unforgettable.”
This was a great introduction to the many pleasures of Tignes and was just a warm up. We have the Four Corners Challenge ahead of us: a dawn, lunch-skipping sprint around the ends of the Espace Killy, the so-called connecting region of Tignes and Val d’Isère. This adventure reaches the dizzying summit of the wind-blown Grande Motte glacier at approximately 3,456 metres.
I was able to enjoy these breathtaking mountains without the gnawing guilt that usually comes with reaching them.
That evening, as I lay sweating in the hotel sauna, I could feel the effects of the slopes all over my body. But today, of course, you need to consider your own impact on the slopes. Global warming is already having a devastating impact on the Alps; The lack of snowfall leaves resorts, especially lower-lying ones, struggling to stay open all season long. One of them, La Sambuy, has permanently closed its slopes.
But for once, I was able to enjoy these breathtaking mountains without the painful guilt that usually comes with reaching them. I had arrived by train from London St Pancras, departing at 9am on a Saturday, on the inaugural journey of Eurostar’s resurrected Snow Train, a service that was halted in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.
After a quick change in Lille, where we didn’t even have to change platforms, our spacious TGV sped towards Bourg St Maurice after dusk, past stunning sunsets over sparkling lakes. The train certainly seemed popular with the British: our rapidly advancing juggernaut ran out of tea within an hour. From Bourg in the heart of the French Alps, Tignes can be reached in just 40 minutes by minibus.
While transportation accounts for the lion’s share of the carbon footprint of a snow holiday, hotels also play a role in this. We stayed at the Rosset, a chalet-style hotel with a stylish top-floor bar overlooking the mountains, plush sofas, a crackling, cheek-scratching log fire and a seemingly endless supply of post-track cakes, pre-dinner canapés and sodas. .
No wonder après in Tignes and Val d’Isère means dancing on the tables: the adrenaline keeps on coming
Rosset, a five-minute walk from the Tignes cable cars, has reduced food waste by implementing waste, water and even cling film reductions, as well as refillable toiletry dispensers and a requirement for guests to choose their dinner in advance. This left me choosing between miso eggplant, roasted sea bass, or steamed mussels while biting into goat cheese on sourdough toast for breakfast.
Water comes from the tap (it’s available bottled) and the general sentiment is less meat, more vegetables and a focus on local sources, right down to the artwork on the walls. These massive black-and-white images, all provided by a local photography collective called Art’com, depict brooding and often cloud-shrouded mountains, a far cry from the usual soft blue skies over airy peaks.
Four Corners required an early morning trip up the Scare Chair, the nickname given to Leissières’ connection to the Pisaillas glacier, an oasis of spectacular and generally less intense runs. Widely considered the world’s scariest elevator, the Chair of Fear climbs a gnarly mountain ridge in a sickening, high-speed ride, followed by a lurching drop down the other side.
It did not disappoint, offering a spectacular gateway to everything wonderful about Tignes, one of Europe’s highest resorts. You can weave in and out of off-piste powder fields all day long on wide, weaving, twisting, laying, bread-and-butter runs. But if there’s also a desire to go high, far and fast, Tignes takes some beating; As we discovered in every exciting inch of the Four Corners, not to mention that long, final, dizzying descent from the Grande Motte via funicular. It shoots a bullet-like tunnel through the black.
No wonder après in Tignes and Val d’Isère means dancing on the tables: The adrenaline keeps on coming. “I’ve been voted Folkestone’s best dancer!” said the woman who shared the tabletop with me at Folie Douce, or Sheer Madness, a legendary open-air party palace that goes wild in the peaks above Val d’Isère just as the sun begins to set. Folie Douce superfan Chemmy Alcott had passed away by now, but I could imagine him saying: “Other bars are nice and fun, but they’re unforgettable.” Folie Douce is certainly unforgettable, with its resident dancers in fancy attire sharing the stage space with a rotating light show.
There were lots of great kits at the show (plus two guys in Teletubby costumes). But among all the flashy big brands, I was pleased to occasionally see Re-Action gear. Re-Action is a global collective with a branch in nearby Courchevel. There, five staff recycle, for example, the uniforms of lift operators, ski instructors and chalet staff, repairing and patching expensive clothing that is often thrown into landfill after a few seasons.
“I used to have two boot repair shops,” Re-Action founder Gavin Fernie-Jones told me over a beer at the Loop bar in Tignes. “But I’m tired of seeing consumption and waste in the industry. People will even buy kits and throw them away at the end of the holiday. But we can buy a jacket worth 400 Euros, patch it, offer it for sale for 120 Euros and it will disappear in seconds.”
Fernie-Jones, 43, originally from the Peak District, was wearing ’50/50′, a Re-Action feature in which two jacket halves (in this case one grey, the other teal) are spliced together. It looked great. “We want our stuff to be identifiable,” she said. “We have our own point of view. The patches are not intended to interfere with each other. They celebrate work.”
He added that in terms of ecological thinking, Tignes is one of the best resorts with Flocon Vert or Green Snowflake status. “Imagine mountains without trash cans,” reads a common sign on elevators. “Take your garbage home.” So that’s what I did: mostly napkins, cans and used tea bags; I tucked these into my bag as I left my hotel room and took one last look at the framed message on the table. “Help us be greener,” he said, “so we don’t have mountains.”
Trip provided by Inghams Ski seven nights half board Departing from Hotel Rosset, Tignes London St Pancrasfrom £1,438 per person, based on two adults sharing. All trains and transfers included