Ski Resorts Are Dystopian Playgrounds. I Like Them Anyway
Powder, privilege, and an unimpressed oligarch’s daughter.
April 2010: the year I learned that ‘legendary’ off-piste routes are just tourism speak for ‘you might die here.’ Naturally, I couldn’t wait to try it. I woke up at my mum’s house in the Chamonix Valley (yes, I know how that sounds), rain hammering outside at 1,000 meters. By the time I met Eyvind, a Norwegian colleague from Geneva, and our guide, the valley’s rain had turned to over a meter of fresh snow at altitude. Boarding the cable car to the top of the Aiguille du Midi—Europe’s highest ski lift at 3,800 meters—felt like stepping into another world.
When the clouds cleared, we were on the shoulder of Mont Blanc, and the wind had dropped. Ahead lay the Vallée Blanche, one of the world’s most iconic off-piste routes; a 20-kilometer descent through towering glacial walls and yawning crevasses. Traversing the Arête des Cosmiques – a 200-meter ridge with 2,800-meter drops on either side – was as terrifying as it sounds. My crampons scraped for grip as I slipped, and I thought I was auditioning for my own survival movie. Fortunately, Eyvind lifted me back up. But the payoff? It was the best snowboarding day of snow in my life.
As a teenager in the early 2000s, snowboarding was my way out of the grey monotony of British winters. I worked minimum-wage shifts at Marks & Spencer Carlisle – and I couldn’t hide my lack of enthusiasm for scanning Percy Pigs and shelving Chicken Tikka Masala ready meals for one. Every penny was hoarded for a week in the Alps with friends – a brief February half-term reprieve from school, drizzle, and the existential horror of shelf-stacking. Naturally, I wanted more.
I took a gap year before university and got a job at a small hotel in Courchevel 1850; the “crown jewel” of the Three Valleys. I had arrived! Or so I thought until I discovered one restaurant charged 45 euros for a bowl of soup, which was coincidentally my weekly wage. The resort, much to my horror, turned out to be a snow-covered diorama of Britain’s class system: I was the token northerner, dodging conversations with posh kids who spoke like they’d been raised in a Jane Austen novel. The hotel I worked at was essentially the Alpine version of Fawlty Towers. It was cheap, chaotic, and attracted a special breed of guest: social climbers. These people paid more for worse service just to say they’d been to Courchevel. I scraped by on scraps of wages, serving toast and tea to people who probably spent more on their dogs’ sweaters than I did on food.
Meanwhile, the resort’s VIPs lived it up at the other hotels and chalets. Ewan McGregor brought his family, David Beckham tried to patch things up with Victoria after a Madrid affair, and Roman Abramovich drank €10,000 bottles of Rémy Martin at Piggies, a deceptively ordinary-looking bar at the heart of the resort. Not to be outdone, the CEO of Samsung rented three entire pistes so he could learn to ski without sharing a charlift with peasants.
And then there was me. New glamorous location, same clueless, daydreaming adolescent. Truthfully, I was terrible at my job. I could barely keep on top of the breakfast buffet, let alone clean up afterward. The 23-year-old manager of the hotel (a stressed-out veteran by my standards) knew I was a walking disaster. But she took pity, shielding me so I wasn’t fired despite glaring incompetence. But I learned a lot that year: how to snowboard off-piste, drink far too much, and embarrass myself in front of an oligarch’s daughter who had been giving me the eye. It was a formative experience.
Here’s what I realized: Courchevel is a place full of dross. The fancier the resort, the bigger the egos. The best ski resort? One with good snow and as few people as possible.
Which brings me to Chamonix. After my Courchevel stint, my mum picked me up, and we stopped off there. The place blew me away. Glaciers spilled down steep mountainsides, and Mont Blanc loomed above. Unlike Courchevel, Chamonix had a disheveled charm. Sure, it has its fair share of wankers, there’s a Polo Ralph Lauren store, after all, but they’re outnumbered by mountaineering shops and rowdy bars where you can spot climbers casually debating whether to risk their lives tomorrow over a pint. It’s chaos, but it works.
Four years later, my mum announced she was buying a small chalet in Chamonix. She’d inherited a modest sum and invested it just before the 2008 crash. The chalet was a compact yet perfectly cozy fixer-upper with Hobbit-sized ceilings upstairs, but it’s been rented solidly ever since. Chamonix became a second home.
It’s not like other Alpine resorts. The five small ski areas are disconnected across the valley, and the groomed pistes are mediocre. The reason people come to Chamonix is that it’s a choose-your-own-adventure type of place; once you reach the top of the lift, you don’t follow the groomed trail but find your way down. It’s savage, unpredictable, and brilliant. It also helps that the scenery is incredible.
After moving to Canada in 2012, I started to appreciate the Alps even more. As a teenager, I’d romanticized North American skiing, imagining it as the promised land. The reality? East Coast resorts like Stowe serve up icy conditions that make every turn feel like a near-death experience. All resorts across Canada and the US are also much smaller than their European counterparts, and you’ll end up doing the same runs over and over.
While the snow is softer and more reliable in the Rockies, North American ski resorts share the same fundamental problems. Nearly all of them are owned by Vail Resorts or Alterra, monopolising the market and eliminating any need to compete on price; daily lift passes cost an average of $250. Instead, they focus on upselling: early lift access, fast passes, overpriced lodging, and subpar cafeteria burgers paired with over-hopped IPAs from faux-independent breweries with names like “Three Peaks Brewing Co”.
I hope the Alps won’t be heading in the same direction. Chamonix is now included on the Ikon Pass, and American accents are much more common than they used to be. And I can’t blame them for coming where it’s cheaper; European skiing offers much better value. While American-style private equity ownership has become a reality at some Swiss resorts, the French and Austrians have done an admirable job of protecting these resorts from hostile takeovers.
I started bringing my cameras on the slopes in 2019, not just to capture the fun but to document the contradictions. Ski resorts are surreal, industrialised playgrounds carved from nature, with entire mountainsides flattened and groomed to manufacture leisure. Snow cannons blast artificial flakes into the air because the climate isn’t cooperating, a dystopian workaround for a problem we created. The more I thought about it, the more absurd it all seemed.
My inspirations are Luigi Ghirri and Martin Parr. Ghirri’s photos poke fun at human interventions in natural landscapes. I love how he captures the ridiculousness of turning natural settings into backdrops for our egos. Parr’s Small World is a satire of global tourism. His street photography has always reveled in the garish, the kitsch, and the quintessentially human. Both inspire me to document the bizarre contrasts of skiing culture.
Balancing the joy of the slopes with the faff of carrying a camera is tricky – your ski partners will roll their eyes. My aunt Rosie, with the energy and stamina of a Duracell bunny, would be exasperated by my gear fumbling before getting on chairlifts. This week in Chamonix, I’ve been shooting with my Nikon Zf and a 40mm f2 lens, a compact, reliable setup perfect for the deadpan documentary aesthetic I love. I left my Leica M11 at home; dropping it from a chairlift would be too much to bear. Shooting mainly in black and white, I focused on the interplay of snow, shadows, and light. By midday, the fresh powder turned into a chaotic patchwork of tracks, a reminder of how many others are after the same experience as you.
But days like this are becoming less frequent. Rising temperatures mean some lower-altitude resorts have closed permanently, and more will likely follow. Chamonix’s glaciers bear the scars of climate change, their retreat marked by plaques showing how far they’ve melted in just 20 years. Skiing, for all its escapism, is tied to the health of these mountains. It’s a privilege that might not exist for future generations unless we address the root cause
As I pack up my gear and suitcase after a fantastic week in Chamonix, writing this Substack post has made me reflect on how much the Alps have shaped me, not just as a winter sports enthusiast but as someone who finds joy in the absurdity of this pastime. From messing up breakfast buffets in Courchevel to slipping on the Vallée Blanche, these experiences are part of my story.
Skiing and snowboarding have always been an escape; a way out of the grey, the grind, the monotony. But the irony is that we escape to places we’re actively ruining. The mountains, in their infinite patience, let us carve them up, flatten their slopes, and spray fake snow all over their faces like some kind of bizarre winter spa treatment. They’ve seen worse. Maybe that’s why they keep pulling me back like an indifferent cat tolerating your affection because you feed it. For now, the snow still falls, the tracks still fade, and the mountains still stand.
You’ve made it to the end
Thank you for reading this rather long piece! I don’t want to sound like a record on repeat, but your feedback and support so far have been very encouraging— thank you to everyone who’s subscribed. It means a lot. If you’re enjoying this, please share it with a friend or message me. More stories to come soon—stay tuned! Feel free to follow me on Instagram too.
Nice. I really enjoy your photographs. Very good. The Parr and Ghirri references and choices are equally well chosen! Really nice. My favourite: Flégère with the little chalet.
I absolutely enjoy this read 😍.
Spark’s of encouragement for me to take more Protoss mixed with a great story.