From the moment you clamber off the train, halfway up the track from Villars to Le Bretaye, you know that Whitepod is going to be different. One minute, you’re lounging about on upholstered train seats, chatting with Whitepod’s owner and host, Sofia de Meyer, about the flight and the traffic in Geneva, utterly cocooned in the convenience of modern life; the next, you’re standing by the side of the track in complete darkness, in the middle of nowhere. The train’s doors close, it grinds its way on uphill and, once it’s out of earshot, you don’t hear a thing except the sound of your own breathing.
Of the normal clatter and chatter of the modern ski resort, there is not one trace. No raucous bars, no overpriced restaurants, no come-hither shops brimming with this year’s must-have jacket and goggles. Slowly, your eyes adjust. In front of you, bathed in moonlight, is a vast Alpine pasture, scattered with pine trees, and — vaguely — beyond is the vast bulk of a mountain called Les Diablerets. That’s when Sofia draws your attention to a chalet perched on a shoulder of the slope, just over a mile away. This, she will tell you, is the location of Whitepod, although by night it’s impossible to see the pods themselves. And the only way to get there is to walk or ski.
It’s the perfect initiation to the place: and a necessary one, too. Perched at 5,380ft on the side of a Swiss Alp, Whitepod is quite unlike anything you’ll ever have seen in skiing, and the sooner you get used to the idea, the better. It’s based around a beautifully restored, stunningly sited 19th-century chalet, but the real heart of the place is provided by the five white minidomes that sit above it. Evenly spaced over the mountainside on wooden platforms, they’re essentially high-tech tents, made out of triple-insulated cotton that has been stretched over a space-efficient and virtually indestructible steel frame. Think of them as the woolly winter cousins of the tented safari camps of Africa and you’ll begin to get an idea of the feel of the place. But not of the ambition — because this is a world where the temperature can drop to -20C. Staying in such an environment routinely involves an orgy of consumption: steaming baths, overheated rooms, blazing electrical light. To attempt to provide low-impact, low-maintenance, fuel-efficient accommodation in such a place is an extraordinarily brave, and bold, undertaking.
To enjoy it, you need to be ready and willing to make sacrifices — such as doing without limitless hot water and electric light. In the chalet, where guests congregate for communal meals, there’s a generator that runs for a couple of hours twice a day, heating a 150-litre tank of water. If there’s a full complement of 10 guests, that works out at just 15 litres each — which means a quick stop-start shower rather than a long soak. The fact that it has only one bathroom, and two loos, is also a challenge — as is the prospect of a subzero walk from pod to chalet in the middle of the night if nature calls and you don’t want to use the chamber pot that sits under your bed.
The rewards you get in return, however, are immense. Most obvious, right from the start, is the sense of peace and tranquillity. Usually, on a skiing holiday, this only comes in snatches — if you venture off piste, or at the end of the day, when the lifts are about to close. Here, it’s constant and all-encompassing. The pods themselves are a thrill, too — especially after dinner, when Sofia’s been in to stoke the wood-burning stoves that provide them with heat. Glowing orange with the flames from the fire, with additional lighting provided by the moon and — if you want them — Tilley lamps and torches, they are the most romantic bedrooms in the Alps. True, they get pretty chilly if the fire goes out, but wrapped in a double duvet and lying on your own personal sheepskin, you’ll be impervious to the cold. Besides, the need to keep the fire going only adds to the sense of adventure — and when were you last able to say that about the simple act of going to bed?
During the day, that sense of adventure is increased by Whitepod’s guides and instructors. Sofia has put together an impressive team that includes four mountain guides — each of whom holds the highest qualification in mountaineering, the UIAGM — and a ski instructor, Céline Daetwyler, who is the daughter of an Olympic champion and a former World Cup racer herself. In their company, you can ski the easy-going pistes of Villars, work on your race technique on the local slalom course or take your chances on the hard-core descents beneath the Diablerets glacier. Alternatively, you can eschew the usual headlong rush of the resort and take off into the back country on a pair of snowshoes or touring skis. It’s not far: after all, the back country starts at the front door of your pod. A day spent in its embrace, with only the chamois and the alpine chough for company, is a revelation.
Of course, not everyone is going to take to Whitepod. This is a much more intimate encounter with winter — and with the cold — than some will tolerate. Anyone with an old-fashioned sense of luxury, in which more of everything is the key, will find it hard work too. But if you’ve ever longed for a more detailed examination of the mountains than the average winter-sports holiday can provide, or tired of the industrial scale of modern skiing, then you’re going to thrill to the atmosphere and style of the place.
You certainly don’t have to be a paid-up member of the save-the-planet party. I’m not, but I found it intriguing to see just how much of modern life you could strip away while still feeling comfortable on an Alp in winter. I loved the locally sourced food and wine, too: char from Lake Geneva, goat’s cheese from the local dairy, blackberries from the garden of Whitepod’s chef, Camille Erbetta. Above all, however, I loved the quiet, and the way it flowed into every gap in conver- sation or pause in activity. For a long weekend in winter, far from the madding crowd, I can’t think of anywhere better.
Travel brief
Whitepod (07787 515406, www.whitepod.com) costs £240pp per night (minimum two nights), full-board, including guiding and instruction, and transfers from Geneva.
Getting there: there are good deals to Geneva with EasyJet (0870 600 0000, www.easyjet.com) from Bristol, East Midlands, Gatwick, Luton, Liverpool and Newcastle, from £51; BMI Baby (0870 264 2229, www.bmibaby.co.uk) from Birmingham, Cardiff and Durham Tees Valley, from £61; and Aer Lingus (0818 365000, www.aerlingus.com) from Dublin, from €99. Whitepod transfers you to Villars, whence you ride the mountain train, then ski, hike or snowshoe into camp.
Tour operators: Original Travel (020 7978 7333, www.originaltravel.co.uk) has three nights at Whitepod from £805pp, full-board, including flights, transfers and guiding.
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Future skiing
WHITEPOD ISN’T the only way that skiing’s being reinvented this season:
The ultimate off-piste safari
The stretch of mountains that runs from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn is the climax of the Alps and a magnet for off-piste adventurers. Now you can ski-tour it all with the new Mont Blanc Discovery pass. The pass comes in two versions, the more interesting being the six-day one. It buys four days of guided skiing in one of three big areas — Chamonix, Verbier or the Valle d’Aosta — with one day in each of the two remaining areas. Courmayeur, in Italy, looks like the best base, and Momentum Travel (020 7371 9111, www.momentum.uk.com) has one week at the three-star Bouton d’Or, including flights, transfers and the pass, for £949pp.
Six-star heli-skiing
With Sea to Sky Adventures (00 1 604 935 3228, www.seatoskyholidays.com), your helipad is the Absinthe, a 200ft luxury cruise ship that plies the waters beneath British Columbia’s Coast Mountains. With Frontier Ski (020 8776 8709, www.frontier-ski.co.uk), the cost is a whopping £6,663pp a week, full-board, excluding the air fare to Canada, but each seven-night cruise has just 12 guests and none of the runs has chairlifts.
Ski-touring the fjords
Put the crowds behind you on a four-night, ship-based tour of Norway’s Lyngen Alps, beyond the Arctic Circle, with Original Travel (020 7978 7333, www.originaltravel.co.uk); prices start at £1,545pp, full-board, including flights and transfers. You’ll need to be superfit — each morning, you’ll be climbing the 4,000ft peaks you’ll later descend.
Private members’ Chamonix
The Clubhouse (00 33 4 50 90 96 56, www.clubhouse.fr) claims to be a new concept in ski accommodation — a hotel that’s also a private members’ club. Run by the owners of Soho’s Milk & Honey, it has a swanky bar and restaurant, and the bunk rooms and bedrooms are sleek and modern. Membership costs £106 per year, and entitles you to priority booking and discounts on room prices — which normally start at £177 per night, B&B.
