One Night in a High-Luxury, High-Adventure Ski Lodge in the French Alps

Welcome to One Night In, a series about staying in the most unparalleled places available to rest your head.

Ultimately, there is no way to tell people you’re going to the Alps to ski for a month without sounding obnoxious. "Skiing is actually cheaper there!" I exclaim. (True, ski passes at the largest resorts in Europe are less expensive than those at my local hill in the Hudson Valley.) "I’ll be working the whole time!" I insist. (Also true, the blessings of the time difference with the east coast means that I can ski all morning and work all afternoon, ideally with an Aperol spritz…I mean, a glass of water.) But at the end of the day, you must accept and admit that being able to do such a thing is an extraordinary privilege.

Still, on my own monthlong Alps ski trip, that privilege has limits. For the first three weeks of March, I’m staying at the cheapest Airbnbs I can find. I’m dragging my just-under-50-lbs-to-avoid-overweight-fees-baggage on trains and buses all over Switzerland and France. I’m partaking in a few nice meals but mostly buying sandwich fixings and yogurt from the grocery store. Please applaud my thrift.

Yet in the final few days, at the very end of the month, I get the opportunity to rocket myself into the upper echelons of the European Ski experience. Eleven, a hospitality company with a dozen lodges scattered worldwide, many in remote locations, has caught my eye for its stated mission: a desire to blend adrenaline-pumping activity with luxury accommodations—an all-inclusive experience that starts at several thousand dollars a night. Though you can go to one of their lodges just to unwind, Eleven courts a particular breed of high-rolling but high-energy guest. The brand name itself originates from the scene in Spinal Tap when Christopher Guest tells the camera the amps go up to 11. Each day at an Eleven lodge comes jam-packed with a tailored outdoor adventure—depending on the location and season, a blend of guided skiing, hiking, fly-fishing, mountain biking, and mountaineering.

"What we tried to create was, you have an amazing adventure and then you come back to an equally well-designed, layered space," says Blake Pike, who founded Eleven with her husband Chad and handles the brand’s design through her studio, Twelve Interiors, when I speak to her after my visit. "I wanted to feel almost like you’re coming home."

Conveniently for my purposes, Eleven has two chalets close to where I’ll already be in France during my marathon ski month. When I write to them on a wing and a prayer before the trip, suggesting I cover the chalets for Dwell’s "One Night In" series, I expect to either not hear anything. I’m thrilled when they write back to welcome me for a comped multiday stay. 

Thursday

3 p.m.: The first luxury, in four days of luxuries, is that Eleven has sent a driver to pick me up at my previous location in Meribel Motarret. We drive for an hour and a half into the scenic Tarentaise Valley before we arrive in the village of Saint Foy. Eleven owns two neighboring properties, Chalets Hibou and Pelerin, which sit near the top of a narrow and winding stone road in the small hamlet of Le Miroir.

Stepping out of the sleek black sprinter van, I immediately note that there is no flashy signage or garish parking lot, no locked gates or high fences the way you might expect from a luxury resort. Laundry hangs on a clothing line next door; a chicken roams in the neighboring yard. The chalets are at once stately and beautiful, yet unobtrusive. I notice their sturdy stone bases, their wooden upper floors and dark slate roofs. The exterior wooden stairs and balconies are being allowed to weather naturally into a dark charcoal. I initially assume the chalets were built several hundred years ago, contemporaneously with much of the surrounding architecture. I’m surprised to learn, several days into my stay, that they actually encompass work from three distinct periods, across three different centuries.

The initial construction of Hibou, the chalet I’ll be staying in, likely dates to the 1700s, and would have originally been used as an actual farmhouse, complete with wooden haylofts, a stone basement for the animals, and a living area for the families. Pelerin, on the other hand, was built in the 1950s. When Eleven bought the properties in the 2010s, they renovated and expanded both, bringing them into the modern era with geothermal heat pump technology and smart home integration, while maintaining the spirit and bones of the original designs. These choices were made in part due to the brand’s desire to honor the character of the area, though also due to local regulations: the hamlet of Le Miroir falls under the purview of the Architectes des Bâtiments de France, an authority for national heritage and preservation that has strict rules around building exteriors. John Featherman, Eleven’s managing director of assets and development, later told me in an email that following these constraints required careful work with a local architect. "It’s a negotiation, but a healthy one: the regulations protect the very sense of place that drew us here."

At the door, I’m greeted by my "Experience manager," Emeline, who will spend the next several days coordinating every detail of my stay. She’s the picture of calm, friendly competence and she gives me and my fellow guest—another solo female traveler—an initial tour of Hibou.

Walking into the chalet, I’m struck by the most wonderful smell of a flickering candle on an entryway table. While Eleven aims for each of its properties to lean into the local environment and culture in their respective designs, there are a few consistent features that unite all locations. These candles are among them. (In recent years, I’ve tried to "get into candles," thinking, perhaps, that this is what an evolved adult woman should appreciate and also that maybe lighting a scented candle in the evening would magically melt away all my anxieties. The habit has never stuck, although this scent, allegedly "Japanese Quince," may make me a convert.) 

Beyond the smell, the entire vibe of the chalet immediately puts me at ease. This is an alpine lodge at heart so there’s of course no shortage of wood—hardwood floors, ceilings, and beams, with some wood-paneled wainscoting, but it doesn’t overwhelm, balanced out by sections of exposed stone. I feel, more than anything, like I’m walking into a home. Emeline shows me to my room. Inside, there’s a vintage armoire, a padded headboard and muted gray walls, thick patterned drapes that match the bed’s bolster pillow, and a fur blanket folded on the foot of the bed. The bathroom has a vintage pull chain toilet (the bathroom fixtures, interestingly enough, are another consistent feature across all Eleven locations) and the floor is a locally sourced stone, Bleu de Savoie.

Joni Mitchell is playing throughout the house speakers, including those in my room, which you can toggle on and off independently in both the bathroom and the bedroom. Prior to my stay, Eleven sent an extensive questionnaire which had some practical questions—ski size and ability, allergies, etc.—but also went further: the lodge uses the music tastes and food preferences of its current guests to curate a chalet playlist and guide menu planning, respectively. Terrified that someone would judge my music taste, I’d left that section blank, though I was very happy to have Blue as the soundtrack to my unpacking.

5 p.m.: There are four floors at Chateau Hibou and it will take me my full four days to really spend time on each. The chalet is grand but never feels overwhelming; each level its own self-contained swaddle, and there are only seven guest rooms. With a couple hours to kill before dinner, I ascend to what will prove to be my favorite area (save for my bed and the hot tub), the high-ceilinged top floor, which houses the kitchen, dining room, and a sunken lounge. There are several seating areas, each framed around coffee tables and fireplaces. "I think it’s important to create a lot of places to sit, because people do like to move through the property," Blake tells me. "It’s not like everyone is congregating in the living room at all times. It’s nice to enjoy different parts of it during the day."

When decor items match, it’s subtle. The pieces, from the lamps to the chair to the art, are a blend of vintage and new buys and custom builds. There’s no copy paste here, and yet the design never clashes or feels kitsch. Many pieces were sourced from a (now sadly out-of-business) secondhand store in Albertville, a 30-minute drive away. "That was just a treasure trove," Blake says. "We’d drive down there and load up just van after van after van. It was as if this entire generation of people were unloading these traditional Savoyard pieces. I was so fortunate and I was able to scoop up so much locally." A good portion of the decor was also sourced from England, at a pre-Brexit time when many French antiques were still flowing into the U.K. (This includes a beautiful flame-stitched Os de Mouton sofa in the Chalet Hibou dining room.) 

I settle into an armchair in the lounge, and am approached by Marjorie Dussarrat, another Eleven Experience manager who offers me a glass of champagne and a plate of boquerones. I accept. When in Le Miroir! 

Soon enough I’m joined by Mike Hattrup, Eleven’s director of skiing. Mike, chatty and warm, is based in the U.S. but will also be staying at the Chalet over the next few days. He notes my shoeless (but sock-covered) feet. "I wasn’t sure if that was okay!" I say. Normally, I would not walk around a hotel without shoes, particularly one this nice, but Hibou seems to encourage a casual relaxation. This is one of the things he loves about this place, Mike agrees. It’s elegant, but also feels like a place where you can put your feet up on the coffee table.