Waking up in the mountains is always magical; drawing the curtains feels like looking at a green screen of supersized, digitally enhanced peaks. Living just over an hour from the French Alps means I’m fortunate enough to go regularly, but most of my recent trips have been to hone my (shaky) skiing skills, hoping that I don’t take anyone out, Gwyneth-style.
Briançon, Serre Chevalier Valley, is the highest city in France. It looks remote, but a direct sleeper train service from Paris means that visiting Brits can quite literally leave the office and wake up the next morning in the mountains. From my home in Lyon, the journey was a little less glamorous – sardine-like in the middle seat of a carshare.
In the face of climate change, skiing is increasingly polemic. Chairlifts guzzle energy faster than a group of thirsty Brits consumes demi-pêches (one ski lift uses approximately the same energy in a month as it takes to power 3.8 houses for a year); diesel-belching groomers ready the slopes each night, and often trees are chopped down to create room for runs. Brown bears have been all but eradicated in the Alps and a quarter of Alpine flowers are at risk of imminently disappearing. Many would be justified in thinking the ski industry has had its day, but do we just need to mix up our mountain activities?
Zipline through the trees
(Charlotte Moutier-Benjamin Gremen)
Serre Chevalier has been breaking tradition since 1941 when, in the midst of WW2, the valley installed France’s first mechanic ski lift. It’s been modernised many times over the subsequent 80-odd years, but no glow up was quite so great as in 2019, when the lifts got their first shell of solar panels. Designed by local entrepreneur Xavier DuPort, who owns Sunwind, they’re virtually invisible to the eye and, combined with wind and hydroelectric turbines, have reduced energy consumption by 8.5 per cent (although it’s hoped this will increase to 30 per cent by the end of the year).
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Unlike many of the others in our gondola, we won’t be skiing back down the mountain. Mountain karts await us, three-wheeled tricycles that barely look sturdier than the Fisher Price model I’d once freewheeled around my primary school playground. Downhill they go at a whack, and I almost turtle my trike several times. It’s exhilarating, childish fun, and…
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