Mark Palmer says that St Anton is a great resort
even without snow We all have our ski chalet horrors. Mine came while staying in the swanky French resort of Megève in the mid-1980s and it put me off the whole caper for at least a decade.
I had got up one morning and noticed there was no sign of breakfast and no sighting of either of our Sloaney Pony chalet girls. Then, suddenly, a man appeared from the basement where Flipsy and Flopsy were billeted. He was wearing white Y-fronts and carrying a pair of trousers. ‘Sorry, mate, nearly forgot these,’ he said, heading for the door.
We never got breakfast that morning and then the girl not entertaining Mr Y-fronts had a breakdown when her French boyfriend dumped her and one of our party had to spend hours providing a shoulder for her to cry on. By the end of the week we were practically cooking our own dinners and had considered drawing up a dish-washing rota. But the snow was good.
Twenty years later and here I am sitting in a hot tub on the roof of a former timber mill in St Anton with a glass of Veuve Cliquot and a pretty girl as my companion. The water keeps changing colour and steam rises triumphantly into the air. I feel like something of a cliché, but it’s a pleasant sensation, not least because there is a massage still to come, followed by a party to which all the great and the good from this famous Austrian resort have been invited.
Suffice it to say that the chalet experience has changed beyond recognition. Or, at the very least, it’s changed beyond all recognition from when Colin Murison Small pioneered this uniquely British concept in Grindelwald in 1959. In those days, his ‘Muri birds’ used to melt some cheese and call it fondue and plonk a couple of bottles of acidic red wine on the table.
Today, Scott Dunn doesn’t even use the word chalet just in case you get the wrong idea. This is a ‘lodge’, thank you very much and it comes replete with ensuite bathrooms, flat-screen TVs, sauna and steam rooms, treatments galore, five-course gourmet nosh, fine wines, log fires and chauffeurs to ferry you to and from the slopes.
Chalet girls are ‘hosts’ wearing smart uniforms who may well stay up until dawn in search of the perfect chair-lift companion, but one false move while looking after guests in St Anton and they’ll be on the next flight home.
And the good news is that if you are not locked into skiing during school holidays, then Scott Dunn’s offerings can be enjoyed relatively cheaply. For example, a week towards the end of January costs £985 per person all in — scheduled BA flights, transfers, dinner, bed and breakfast, champagne and canapés every night and as many hours in the hot tub as you like. But go during the February half-term and you’re looking at £1,955 per person.
St Anton itself is something of a gem, and there’s great excitement this season over the opening of its futuristic new gondola that whisks 2,100 people up the mountain every hour. Don’t ask me to explain the technology, but you begin and end each journey by going round a ferris wheel. What’s more, walk out at the top and you’ll find Verwall Stube, a restaurant that’s just gained its second Michelin star.
For as long as St Anton has existed, there has been talk of linking it to Zürs, which itself is linked to Lech. It will happen one day and, when it does, staying in any of the three resorts will provide access to one of the biggest and best ski areas in Europe. As it happens, I learnt to ski in Zürs when we went with Erna Lowe in 1964, but I always wished my parents had chosen Lech instead, which is far prettier and will forever be associated with Princess Diana.
Lech has smart shops, grand hotels and expensive restaurants, and not even Scott Dunn has been able to find a chalet (sorry, lodge) there. Now you may wonder why I keep going on about hot tubs, Michelin stars and flat-screen TVs. Simple. A long weekend here shortly before Christmas provided a great chance to sit in bubbly water, eat stupendously and watch telly. Because one crucial thing was missing and it had better arrive soon or else the whole region will be in trouble: there was absolutely no snow.
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