Hanging off the side of the cornice, something felt off. Minutes earlier, the guides had sawed out a small keyhole in the overhanging snow, just enough of a passageway to slide a pair of skis through and into the steep powder field below. I’d barely started to slip down the icy runway before turning sideways, burying my tips and tails into the cornice walls and coming to an awkward, forced stop. The middle of my skis bounced precariously into open air, and I tried to keep calm as I micro-adjusted my way to safety. It wasn’t working. A quick dogleg left promised shaded powder snow but missing that turn (or falling head over ski boot) promised sharp rocks and a fall over a cliff band. I was stuck in the completely wrong place.
Gabriel Rivas sensed my panic. The young mountain guide had been raised in this section of the French Alps, and, after a stint ski racing with the French youth national team and at University of Colorado in Boulder, he was accustomed to shuttling guests around his home mountains. He motioned to the rope around my waist and gave it a reassuring tug. I’ve got you, he seemed to nod. The shake in my legs began washing down, but not completely out, of my ski boots.
It wasn’t like he’d thrown me into the deep end straight away. Together with lead guide Jean-Noel Gaidet, Rivas and the team at Eleven had slowly ratcheted up our ski objectives over the better part of four days. Methodically, our group progressed to steeper and more consequential terrain, each run getting us a little closer to the kind of bucket list exposure we’d been pining for.
In the Savoie region of Southeastern France, there was no shortage of that awe-commanding alpine. Of course that wasn’t the only show in town. Within the deep mountain valleys that cleaved this passageway into Italy, quaint villages pressed pause on modern day overstimulation, forcing slowdowns laced in Beaufort cheese, locally distilled génépi, winding trail systems, and rows of fruit orchards. From our perch at Eleven Chalet Hibou, Eleven's French hideaway, we’d gotten a taste of it all, immersing ourselves in deep mountain culture.
Trusting Rivas and the fall line, I took a few short breaths and punched my quads to get the blood pumping. I loosened one ski, then the next, and pointed it all downhill.
When it comes to steep skiing, there’s nowhere quite like the northern French Alps. Dominating the Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions, these mountains are home to legendary alpine locales like Chamonix, La Grave, and Val d’Isere. They have attracted some of the world’s best skiers—names like Glen Plake and Sylvain Saudan—but have also forged a special type of skier, the kind that feels at home in high-hanging places.
Jean-Noel Gaidet is one of those local mountain goats. Known as “Jean-No” among friends and colleagues, Gaidet has spent a lifetime poking into every fold of his home valley, hiking, climbing, and skiing his way through the jagged expanse. Along the way, he has developed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the terrain near his home. To ski with Gaidet is not simply to access a ski route, it is to connect a series of ascents and descents into an otherwise impossible adventure.
Rolling up the final switchback into Le Miroir, the tall, blond Frenchman was waiting for us with a side smirk grin. Gaidet had spent most of his life in this small mountain village and could trace his family’s history in town back over five centuries. He’d watched as resorts—places like Val d’Isere and Les Arcs—popped up in the valley starting in the 1960s, but his small hamlet of 593 inhabitants had remained remarkably untouched.
An Englishman came in the 2000s and knocked down his father’s chalet to build a new property, but the visitor never really found his footing. When Eleven Experiences—a experiential guiding and luxury lodging operation based in Crested Butte, Colorado—bought up the chalet (now Eleven Chalet Pelerin) and its neighbor (now Eleven Chalet Hibou) in 2014, they reached out to Gaidet to lead their mountain guiding operation. Gaidet was intrigued but knew that was only part of the puzzle. He agreed to guide, but urged that his wife, Julie Gaidet, run the chalets. A year later, Julie took over as general manager of the newly formed Eleven France.
Every morning, the Gaidets walk the 25 feet from their family home to the chalets. It’s a proximity that became quickly evident during our stay in Le Miroir. Morning yogurt was courtesy of the couples’ friend Eddie (his 100 goats also provide the lodges’ goat cheese). Gaidet had an “egg guy,” just down the hill and called in meat orders from a farm in nearby Bourg Saint-Maurice. The chalet bar was stocked with génépi, the region’s famous liqueur made from local high alpine herbs, and it even had an elusive line on green chartreuse, a French monk-made libation on the verge of extinction.
“You don’t travel to travel to a lodge or a chalet,” Julie told us over dinner one evening. “You travel for an experience.”
For our group, that experience revolved around Gaidet’s extensive alpine imagination. Never one to ski in a straight line, the smirking giant plotted circuitous ski routes that flirted with mind-blowing. On our first morning, we skied off the French resort of La Rosière down to Col du Petit Saint-Bernard, the highest mountain pass of the Tour de France (now under several feet of snow), and a damn good spot for a cappuccino. From there we walked out the backdoor and caught a 15-minute helicopter ride into Italy, skiing fins of powder snow in the shadow of Mont Blanc.
Gaidet will be the first to admit that this is not a typical ski day, but it showcased the versatility of a lodge crafted with customizable adventure in mind. Shortly after catching another whirlybird ride to a risotto-laden lunch, we were shuttled to another toothy peak, dropping back towards France and the promise of more good food and a hot tub bathed in alpenglow.
“Every morning, I wake up and say, ‘I’m lucky,’” said Gaidet, after a full day in the mountains.
The guide has spent a lifetime unlocking this place but sharing it has become a particular calling for the veteran mountain specialist. Sprinkled into our adrenaline-seeking Gaidet added lessons on World War II (the Savoie region was a key crux for invading Italians in the late 1930s), and lectures on local horticulture. Our ski tracks led through popular summer grazing areas for local livestock and past stone cabins known as alpages still utilized by valley shepherds. We finished our days following frozen rivers down long, flume-like channels, flowing downhill and back to the thawing valley.
While ski areas have become a key economic engine in the Savoie, they also put a noticeable strain on the region’s fragile natural balance. As more people flock to the slopes, resorts are cutting down more trees and disrupting more alpine habitats to build lodging and carve new ski slopes. In Val d’Isere, home to the famous ski resort by the same name, population swells from 1,500 year-round residents to nearly 40,000 on winter weekends, increasing the need for resources like fresh water that have otherwise trickled down to villages in the valley.
The Gaidets and their small local team have witnessed these changes firsthand and see their operation at Eleven France as an antidote to the mass commodification of the region. In addition to sourcing a majority of their food and beverage from local producers, they intentionally keep their footprint small in the mountains. ElevenChalet Hibou accommodates a reasonable 16 guests, while Eleven Chalet Pelerin sleeps 12. Usually, the team has one to three groups in the mountains each day, keeping the swarm effect to a minimum. And, though helicopter rides aren’t exactly a low-carbon option, Gaidet says he is hoping to move more into human-powered adventures, exploring backcountry touring routes and hut-to-hut trips that require little to no fuel consumption.
In fact, most of our days were spent climbing up and skiing down under our own power. Our routes mirrored those of valley residents and extreme skiers alike, pushing further off the beaten track in search of solitary turns.
Gaidet, in his element, zigged when others zagged, unlocking untracked snow many days after the last storm. That meant dropping through a forgotten hallway of cliff-lined corn snow near Mont Blanc or 10-plus miles of ascent and descent in the backcountry terrain off of Sainte-Foy—one of the newer ski areas in the region, and reason alone for a return trip. We offset the leg burn with a selection of Beaufort cheese, a lactose-laden delicacy only produced in two valleys on Earth (both, you guessed it, in the Savoie) and cured meat—all laid out on a cleverly placed summit “charcuter-ski.” Our guides pushed us, but in a place like this, it was hard not to take the plunge.
I guess that’s what led me to the steep Val d’Isere death cornice on that last day of our trip, the two rocket ships attached to my feet suddenly hurtling straight down. What felt like seconds of freefall was likely only an instant, enough time to sink an edge in, hook a left turn and stop alongside the rock field that had promised to mangle me only minutes earlier. Shaking with adrenaline, I yelled up to Rivas and untied my rope. In the basin below, Gaidet stood watch with the rest of our party. With a canvas of shady, cold, feathery white rolled out in front of me, I sunk a single deep turn, and then went deeper.
