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The first resort

Alistair Scott

Tuesday, 18th March 2008

Verbier is the trendiest place in the Alps, says Alistair Scott

Walking into the Fer à Cheval, Verbier, Switzerland, on a sunny spring day recently (Verbier is at its very best in springtime and the lifts run here until 27 April), it felt as though nothing had changed in this resort’s café/bar/pizzeria and principal meeting place.

Nothing, that is, since the late 1970s when I first came here. Neil Young’s ‘After the Gold Rush’ and The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ were playing; Pascal, the original owner, was still hanging out even though his distinctive ponytail was somewhat longer and greyer; and the sun was still refracting in the beer glasses of the ski bums and multimillionaires sitting on the terrace.

The youngest of the main Swiss ski resorts, Verbier has always been a place where an international community of rich and poor co-existed happily, united by a love of skiing and enthusiasm for every new trend going. If a new snow sport was invented in the States, you could be sure it would first make European landfall in Verbier, the Aspen of the Alps.

Hence the craze for ‘Hot-Dogging’ (ski acrobatics on bumps, performed using unconventionally short skis, that wrecked many an anterior cruciate ligament) in the Seventies; the early embracement of the snowboard soon afterwards; the sudden, fanatical enthusiasm for paragliding; and so on.

But Verbier skiers always had big appetites for après-ski as well and there was ever a lively nocturnal scene as the lifts closed and the partying began. ‘Ski all day, party all night, then get up and do it all over again’ was the season-long mantra for many.

Of course I was kidding myself that afternoon in the Fer à Cheval. Verbier has changed enormously in 30-odd years — it has tripled in size, though certainly not in year-round population — for a start. New lifts have been built and pistes and snow-making have improved. Most significantly, thousands of new luxury chalets and apartments have been constructed in a sprawling fashion above the resort centre.

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