Until relatively recently, this wasn’t quite the accepted view of Avoriaz – or the other French ‘ski factories’, including Flaine, Tignes, Les Arcs, Val Thorens and Les Menuires, all purpose-built in the 1960s as part of the government’s Plan Neige, an attempt to help kickstart the country’s economy. But more than that, I love its egalitarian hedonism and madcap creativity the completeness of its faintly surreal vision, from the needle-like church/tourist office to the tropical-kitsch Aquariaz water park. Despite that, I’m fond of the place, partly because it works seamlessly, with everywhere in the car-free town easily reachable on skis, and because the skiing is great – from sweeping powder fields to cruise-y red runs like high-altitude motorways. I first visited with my parents aged around nine, staying in a poky Pierre & Vacances apartment with stucco walls like miniature mountainscapes, then again just after university, when it looked even stranger in the 2am half-light after a night of absinthe and enforced table dancing to Ricky Martin at Le Shooters. On the afternoon runs of the Dromonts ski lift, half the skiers have groceries from the Sherpa supermarket or rounds of Reblochon from the Aux Delices d’Antan.
Clanking quasi-industrial lifts navigate the surface of the high-rises, all weird angles and portholes caked in snow, disgorging skiers into long external corridors. The resort itself resembles a retro-futuristic parallel universe. At the end of a winding road from Morzine, the first view of Avoriaz is of the red cedar buildings of La Falaise, perched on the edge of a monumental cliff like some warped cruise ship.
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