The Alps have two seasons most travellers know about — the ski week in winter and the mountain walk in high summer. Less remarked is the third: an Alpine spring, bespoke, quiet, and arranged around a single private chalet.
By late February, the snow on the upper slopes is at its most reliable and the weather on the valleys has softened enough to sit a little, at midday, outside. It is the moment when serious skiers go up for the best runs of the year, and when non-skiers, if the chalet is the right one, can have a week of mountains without ever putting on a boot.
Our private Alpine spring weeks centre on a chalet held for a single family or party. Six to ten bedrooms, a full household, and a single chef. A ski guide standing by if wanted. A snowshoe route, a horse-drawn sleigh up to a mountain restaurant, a private terrace with the afternoon sun still strong enough to lie out in. A cellist, some years, for an evening.
The valleys we favour are small. A chalet above Gstaad, where the main road ends at the mountain. The back villages of Zermatt that no cable car reaches. A small hamlet in the Engadine, where German is still the evening language and the hotel has known the same six families for three generations.
We find that clients who take this week once come back to it. There is a particular luxury to mountains in privacy, and to snow as background rather than objective. What we design, specifically, is the freedom to do nothing — without the mountains taking offence.
A Swiss spring, carefully held, is for travellers who have the time and the temperament to let the mountains be mountains. We think of it, quietly, as one of the most complete weeks a European traveller can take.
