Chalet des Neiges

Chalet des Neiges Highlights

• Super-convenient ski-in, ski-out location
• Part of beautiful building designed especially for YSE
• Lovely bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms throughout
• Huge sitting room with massive log fire, satellite TV, surround sound and balconies south and north, the latter overlooking the World Cup Downhill
• WiFi
• Separate dining room
• Brilliant location right on the slopes just above La Daille
• Brand new La Daille bubble just below the chalet
• Funival 200m walk
• Ski room with individual locker and boot dryers per bedroom
• Two members of staff, who live out
• The maximum number of guests that can be booked into Chalet des Neiges is 15, including babies and children.

Chalet des Neiges Description

Chalet des Neiges is the ultimate skier’s chalet, just yards from some of world’s best-known runs and two of France’s fastest ski lifts! A minute’s walk takes you to the edge of the piste, a further 30 seconds’ glide reaches the Funival, and a five-minute ride gets you to the top of Bellevarde. Des Neiges occupies the top three floors of a large chalet built especially for YSE on the slopes at La Daille, surrounded by OK, Orange, Diébold, Raye and Verte runs. Just below is the new super-fast La Daille bubble. Reasonable skiers can ski right back to the door, while the less experienced tend to stop about 60m away.

The location is so perfect that we not only signed a very long lease on these chalets, we also bought the shack next door to live in ourselves. Could we give a more sincere endorsement than that?

Being right on the pistes is great. And these aren’t just any pistes: they are World Cup Downhill pistes. They offer skiing for every standard, ultra-quick lifts back up and guaranteed snow from snow cannons top to bottom. And once the lifts close, they become lethal with tearaway toddlers on toboggans!

The only people who find the 20-minute walk from the main village less than ideal are those who spend more time in Cocorico than on the slopes, but the free bus runs until 02.00, and the teenage sample we asked were enthusiastic: apparently, staying in La Daille gives time to chew on a mint or two on the way home, while being right on the pistes means even with a record hangover one can still be on the first lift. Parents will be reassured to hear that.

The owner of the chalets is a furniture maker, so they are as meticulously finished and furnished as his showrooms down the valley near Aime. There are acres of wood, much of it quite old.

More importantly, the chalets are very comfortable and well appointed. The bedrooms are not huge – predictably, since the real estate they occupy must be some of the most desirable in the world – but they are tastefully decorated and have underfloor heating, reasonable cupboards, safes, good lighting and gorgeous bathrooms. Even the beds are bigger and firmer than usual in France. Each bedroom has a private ski locker in the ski room, with individual boot dryers.

The sitting and dining rooms are magnificent. Tons of wood and stone, bottomless sofas, and fireplaces from the only man in the Savoie who knows how to make a chimney draw properly.

Chalet des Neiges has seven bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms. It actually has space for fifteen guests, Room 3 having the possibility of three people.

The heart of the chalet is the dining room, with its long table and open-plan kitchen, where one of our top chefs and two assistants will be serving some of the best food in Val d’Isère (the proof of the pudding being the fact that des Neiges almost certainly has more regular customers than any other chalet in Val d’Isère). After eating or, Heaven forbid, drinking a little too much, it is a mercifully short stagger to the large L-shaped sitting room with its huge log fire, balconies, WiFi and a plasma-screen Smart TV.