Villars and the Vaud Alps

Villars-sur-Ollon sits at about 1,300 m on a south-facing shelf above the Rhône valley, in the Vaud Alps — the French-speaking mountains between Lake Geneva and the Valais.

It is a family resort rather than a serious one, and it is honest about that: wide runs, plenty of sun, a good deal of it below the treeline, and the Dents du Midi and Mont Blanc filling the view down the valley.

Getting up

The approach is part of it. A rack railway from Bex in the valley climbs to Villars in about 50 minutes, through vineyards and forest, on a line that runs partly along the village streets at the bottom.

Bex is on the main Rhône valley line: Lausanne about 40 minutes, Geneva about an hour and a quarter.

The skiing

Villars links with Les Diablerets over the Meilleret, giving a shared area of around 125 km, and the pass usually includes Glacier 3000 and Gryon.

It is intermediate country: not steep, well groomed, and better for families and for people who want to ski all day without being frightened than for anyone chasing couloirs. The snow at this altitude is less reliable than in the high Valais, which is what the glacier is for.

Glacier 3000

Above Les Diablerets, and the excursion of the region: a cable car to 2,971 m and a building by Mario Botta, with the Peak Walk — the only suspension bridge in the world connecting two summits — a toboggan run, a dog-sled track and skiing into early summer.

The view runs to the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. It is also reachable from Gstaad on the other side.

The salt mines

Down at Bex are the salt mines, worked since 1684 and still producing. Visitors go in on a small underground train through several kilometres of galleries, some of them cut by hand in the eighteenth century.

Salt mattered enormously here: Switzerland has almost no other domestic source, and the Bex deposits were a strategic asset for centuries. It is a genuinely interesting hour and a good wet-weather answer.

Summer

Around 300 km of marked paths, and the shelf position means most of them are level walking with a long view rather than climbing. The Alpes Vaudoises card, given at check-in by hotels, covers the lifts.

There is also a golf course at 1,600 m, which freezes into a cross-country ski loop in winter.

Getting there

• By train — main line to Bex, then the rack railway. Total from Geneva about two hours.
• By car — a mountain road, and the train is more pleasant.

When to go

December to March for skiing, though check conditions — this is not high-altitude snow. June to September for walking, when the shelf is green and the valley below is baking.

Glacier 3000 runs most of the year, and is the answer when the lower slopes have no snow.