In december 2018, the restaurant and the apartment will be open.

 

December 2019 sees the opening of France’s highest hotel, on the mountainside way above Val d’Isère. At a heady altitude of 2551m, France’s oldest cable car station has been transformed into Le Refuge de Solaise. The project is a partnership between local restaurateur Jean-Claude Borel and local architect Jean-Charles Covarel. Le Refuge has 34 rooms, three large luxury apartments, and a traditional refuge dormitory with 14 beds. Facilities include a 300- seat gourmet restaurant, a cocktail bar, and a seminar and a projection room as well as a children’s play area and a spa with a 23-metre pool that is open to the public. The hotel has truly spectacular 360-degree mountain views.

 

 

Regular visitors to Val d’Isère will remember the site of the hotel as the Tête de Solaise mountain restaurant, sandwiched between the old Solaise Express chair-lift and the Solaise cable-car. Both lifts went out of service with the opening of the 10-seat Solaise Gondola at the start of the 2016/17 season.

 

Access to the hotel in winter is only by the gondola or on skis. In summer it can be reached on foot from the village or by car, gondola, cycle, or motorbike from the route up the col de l’Iseran, the highest paved road in Europe. For the present, winter guests will need to arrive and depart during lift opening hours.

 

The hotel is built in traditional stone, wood, and slate – in keeping with its isolated and beautiful mountain setting. Its location provides dramatic views across the peaks of the Haute Tarentaise and beyond. On warm afternoons it’s always been a spot where skiers like to linger over drinks until the sun sinks beneath the horizon before leaving for the last run to the valley. However, from this winter, you can spend the night up here and enjoy first tracks in the morning on the glorious piste M or the more demanding Rhone-Alpes all the way to the village.

 

A sister hotel, named Base Camp in the centre of Val d'Isère, will be finished in December 2019, adding another 50 hotel rooms to the brand. Boasting undoubtedly the best views in Val d'Isère, in an intimate and unique location, Le Refuge de Solaise presents an opportunity like no other in the French Alps.