Whitepod Ski Resort

The future of European ski resorts may well be found in five eight-foot-high white geodesic-dome tents perched 5,600 feet up a mountain in the Switzerland Alps. The tents are accessible only on foot or on skis. They have no plumbing or electricity, but each has a highly efficient wood stove and are grouped around a restored 19th-century farmhouse that has a solar shower and generator-powered electricity for just a few hours each day.

In such a trip guests will sleep in their tents on full-size beds, snuggled into sheepskin rugs and brushed cotton blankets, and sated on local wines, cheeses and produce like hand-gathered morels. Each dome has a wide window with an unobstructed view south toward Mont Blanc.

The right location of Whitepod is near Villars, an old-fashioned family-style ski resort southwest of Lake Geneva. Laced with streams, dotted with pines and ringed by the jagged tops of higher mountain ranges, it’s a quintessential Alpine ski spot.

But this resort is also in the list of the climate change ecosystems throughout the mountain range. Some scientist suggest that resorts at this altitude of Villars will no longer be sustainable ski areas in as little as 30 years.

Arriving at Whitepod means escaping your ordinary life in stages. The domes are surprisingly spacious inside, with room for an armchair and a bleached pine vanity, and pleasantly warm even as night falls. They’re also fully equipped with oil lamps, slippers, a neat stack of dry wood and an I-pod with tunes ranging from Britpop to Barry White.

Rates at Whitepod, $474 a person a night, which features all meals, ski passes, guides and transfers to and from Geneva’s airport. Dinners at Whitepod are made of locally obtained meats, cheese and vegetables, and served in the candlelit farmhouse kitchen, at a table with other guests. They’re accompanied by local wines, which are a pleasant surprise.