Transfer to Alps: The Essential European Ski Resort Guide
Oct 1, 2026 · 25 min · 8 segments
Welcome to the season 2 premiere of Transfer to Alps! In Episode 1, hosts Liam and Chloe head high up into the Portes du Soleil to explore the completely unique ski resort of Avoriaz 1800. Forget…
But then this local lad from Morzine named Jean Vuarnet went over to California for the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics.
Literally.
He goes to California, wins the downhill gold medal, and completely rewrites the rule book of ski racing.
He was the first bloke to win gold on metal skis, which everyone thought was a terrible idea at the time, and he invented l'œuf, the egg position, that low aerodynamic tuck that every single racer uses today.
He was obsessed with speed and efficiency.
And he brought that exact same, "Let's break everything and start again," attitude back to Morzine.
He gets home, they put him in charge of local tourism, and instead of just adding a couple of basic drag lifts to the gentle hills around Morzine, he looks up at this massive 700-meter cliff above the valley and says, "Let's build a brand-new town up there." And his absolute non-negotiable rule was that there would be zero cars.
Which, if you think about it, was completely mental for the early 1960s.
Back then, the car was king.
It was the ultimate symbol of modern progress.
If you were a developer building a new resort in France, the dream was to let tourists drive their big, petrol-guzzling cars right up to the lobby door of their hotel.
Banning cars was treated like some weird, backward-thinking madness.
Oh, they thought he'd lost his marbles.
They practically laughed him out of the room at first.
He wanted a place where the roads were the ski pistes, where you stepped out of your apartment, clicked into your bindings on the snow, and just slid down to the lift.
It almost broke him, too.
He got the initial permissions in 1962, but the money ran dry almost immediately.
The banks wouldn't touch it because they thought a car-free resort would never attract wealthy holidaymakers.
It was on the absolute brink of bankruptcy before a single shovel of snow had been moved.
But then he met his match.
He teamed up with Gérard Prémont, who was this incredibly wealthy, jazz-loving property developer in his late 20s.
Prémont didn't want a boring, traditional Alpine village either.
He wanted what he called a metropolis of the snows, basically a swinging, high-altitude Saint-Tropez for the jet set crowd.
But then this local lad from Morzine named Jean Vuarnet went over to California for the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics.
Literally.
He goes to California, wins the downhill gold medal, and completely rewrites the rule book of ski racing.
He was the first bloke to win gold on metal skis, which everyone thought was a terrible idea at the time, and he invented l'œuf, the egg position, that low aerodynamic tuck that every single racer uses today.
He was obsessed with speed and efficiency.
And he brought that exact same, "Let's break everything and start again," attitude back to Morzine.
He gets home, they put him in charge of local tourism, and instead of just adding a couple of basic drag lifts to the gentle hills around Morzine, he looks up at this massive 700-meter cliff above the valley and says, "Let's build a brand-new town up there." And his absolute non-negotiable rule was that there would be zero cars.
Which, if you think about it, was completely mental for the early 1960s.
Back then, the car was king.
It was the ultimate symbol of modern progress.
If you were a developer building a new resort in France, the dream was to let tourists drive their big, petrol-guzzling cars right up to the lobby door of their hotel.
Banning cars was treated like some weird, backward-thinking madness.
Oh, they thought he'd lost his marbles.
They practically laughed him out of the room at first.
He wanted a place where the roads were the ski pistes, where you stepped out of your apartment, clicked into your bindings on the snow, and just slid down to the lift.
It almost broke him, too.
He got the initial permissions in 1962, but the money ran dry almost immediately.
The banks wouldn't touch it because they thought a car-free resort would never attract wealthy holidaymakers.
It was on the absolute brink of bankruptcy before a single shovel of snow had been moved.
But then he met his match.
He teamed up with Gérard Prémont, who was this incredibly wealthy, jazz-loving property developer in his late 20s.
Prémont didn't want a boring, traditional Alpine village either.
He wanted what he called a metropolis of the snows, basically a swinging, high-altitude Saint-Tropez for the jet set crowd.
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