Morzine: The Ski Resort With A Conscience

This summer’s burning beaches, forest fires and record-smashing heatwave temperatures have prompted the United Nations to declare we’re in an era of ‘global boiling.’

So for winter sports fans booking for the ski season 2023/24 the clarion call is

S.O.S. Save our Snow as they look forward to chilled fun on the mountain slopes.

Skiing smacks of a pretty selfish pastime.  All hearty hedonists on fuel-guzzling flights, riding energy sapping lifts to transport them up the mountain, relying on snow  cannon to enhance the very stuff we need under our skis and boards.

Melting glaciers are a grotesque and undeniable sign of global warming.

Morzine, my latest destination, prides itself as a ‘resort with a conscience,’  admitting the negative impact of tourism is a major concern. It has launched the Flocon Vert (green snowflake)  initiative to conserve energy, from installing solar panels on chairlifts to rationalising slope grooming and snow making.

With conservation, sustainably, and recycling in mind I stayed in an eco-friendly chalet, Ferme à Jules, run by AliKats, hiked and walked, eschewed the profligate delights of the hot tub,  saved on laundry costs by not using my fluffy bathrobe,  and patronised a charity ski shop that recycles everything from goggles, jackets and gilets to boots, helmets and odd gloves. Every little helps, I hoped.

Leading a charge against the energy crisis is British couple. Ali Judge, 42, who ditched his top banking job in Geneva in to set up a chalet business, AliKats, with his wife Kat. ‘This is the worst year for snow since 1966.  The Alps are warming twice as fast as globally.  It makes me sad,’ he says.

‘But I’m an optimist.  I want to hand over a bright future to our three children and any grandchildren so that when I’m old I can  say: “We tried.”’

He’s a founder member of a pressure group in Morzine called Montagne Vert, dedicated to making the mountains green. He shares his passion with tourism experts, hoteliers and owners of chalets, bars and shops.

He practices what he preaches in the 12 AliKats chalets: no gas or oil fired heating; off-setting carbon emissions (worst offender is air travel) with guests paying voluntary contributions; lobbying government to reinstate ski trains; growing their own fruit and veg; achieving zero food waste and ambitious plans to industrialise the process throughout Morzine; spreading the message alongside the compost to feed their chickens and herbs.

His guests save money and help save the planet by opting out of using the hot tub for a E200 refund. The Low Impact Rewards scheme also gives discounts for travelling by train and eating a plant-based diet.

However worthy, this is no sackcloth and ashes experience. It’s a luxury chalet with delightful staff, inventive menus of delicious food and wine, breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner.  I’ll confess to eating meat: duck breast with dauphinoise potato main after blue cheesecake starter, dessert of poached pear, ginger cake, rosemary ice cream and caramel sauce.

You’ll need to notch up plenty of skiing (Les Portes du Soleil boasts 600 km of ski runs on 308 pistes) to counter the calories. Walking around the stunning Lake Montriond near our chalet hardly counts.

Maybe bopping at the Rock the Pistes musical festival with concerts on the slopes and headlining Eagle-Eye Cherry helped. 

By far my favourite eagle eyes were for real.

On my outstretched left arm perches Fletcher. a white-tailed eagle and one of Europe’s largest birds of prey. Huge talons grip my leather gauntlet and golden eyes glint with an inquisitive gleam, ever alert for a tasty morsel in her mountain home high in the French Alpine ski resort of Morzine.

Feathers ruffle in the chill Spring breeze as skiers swish past in wonderment.

Fellow raptors are an incredible but regular sight at Pointe de Nyon, a cable car ride to 1,500 metres among the snowy peaks of the ski paradise of Portes du Soleil, all thanks to a conservation triumph.

Les Aigles du Léman was founded by Jacques-Olivier Travers. “I’m the man who skis with eagles,” he says.

If you are in luck you can too be part of the experience, or at least walk in their company as the eagle soars overhead.

It’s a bizarre sight as Travers boards a chair lift with eagle on arm, then unleashes this magnificent avian hunter to race him down the piste.  Zealous hunting and human encroachment into their habitat all but extinguished them from the mountains so founding an extensive aviary beside the Nyon Point restaurant was a feather in his conservation cap.

Visiting their chalet style accommodation I introduced myself to the occupants: a condor squawked a greeting with enormous wings extended and curved ivory beak poked through robust netting; a Himalayan vulture eyed me menacingly (maybe aware that in its homeland followers of the Parsi religion would leave their dead on the Towers of Silence to be picked clean); a bald eagle, emblem of the United States, with it bright yellow eyes, legs and beak looked suitably imperious; and in a quiet corner sat a snowy owl, all pure white ball of fluffy feathers with two dark slits of eyes.

As it’s lunchtime Eva Meyrier, partner in the conservation foundation, lets me help feed Figaro, a European red kite, she releases to land on my wrist with a thud to snatch a slither of meat from between gloved fingers.

Every lunchtime these raptors entertain crowds of skiers as Eva raises awareness of conservation. She explains how birds born in captivity have to be taught to fly, like toddlers taking little steps or skiers on the nursery slopes, they are schooled to ride the thermals and soar above the trees. ‘It’s training, a long long training… I love the link between me and my birds. They choose to come back to me, they are completely free to fly away and they really choose to come back,’ explains Eva.

The foundation is aiming sky high: to reintroduce 85 eaglets before 2030 in order to recreate the population around Lake Geneva to its level in 1800. 

All this mountain air and eagle snacks tempted us to lunch on the sunny terrace of Pointe de Nyon restaurant. A gooey Savoyarde omelette filled with bacon, cheese and potato, a green salad and glass of Sauvignon Blanc hit the spot.

Santé!

  • Gill Martin

    Gill Martin is an award winning travel writer and former Fleet Street journalist – Daily Mail reporter, Daily Express feature writer and Sunday Mirror Woman's Editor. She is a freelance writer for national newspapers from the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph to tabloids, magazines, regional newspapers and websites. After a six month career break after the Indian Ocean tsunami where she volunteered as a communications consultant in Banda Aceh, Indonesia for Plan, the children's charity, she is now focused on travel. From skiing everywhere from Kashmir to Argentina, Morocco to Turkey, North America and all over Europe; snow shoeing in Canada; captain of the GB team of the Ski Club of International Journalists; whitewater rafting down the Zambezi; electric mountain biking in Switzerland and cycling in Portugal; Kenyan and South African safaris; riding elephants in India and horses in Brazil; paint balling in Romania; opera and archeology in Serbia; Caribbean snorkelling; sampling food and wine in Italy.

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