Alpine Escapes

Aman Rosa Alpina, Dolomites. In San Cassiano, in Alta Badia, Aman Rosa Alpina is a village Aman with alpine suites, serious spa culture and ski or hiking access to the UNESCO-listed peaks, with Italian and Ladin character in the village around it. Winter skiing and summer walking are both high seasons here. See our Dolomites guide.

San Luis Retreat Hotel & Lodges, South Tyrol. On the Avelengo plateau, 1,400 metres above Merano, San Luis is a hotel village of chalets and tree houses in forty hectares of private larch and spruce forest around a mountain lake. Each chalet has a fireplace and a private sauna, breakfast is brought to your door, and the Merano 2000 ski area is ten minutes away; in summer the lake is for swimming. See our South Tyrol guide.

Aman Le Mélézin, Courchevel. In Courchevel 1850, Aman Le Mélézin is Aman’s French Alps ski hotel, Belle Époque in character, with suites oriented to snow and village and a spa for recovery after days across the Trois Vallées. December to April is the core season, and holiday weeks are scarce. See Courchevel.

Amangani and Caldera House, Jackson Hole. On the crest of East Gros Ventre Butte, about 7,000 feet above the valley, Amangani was Aman’s first North American house: forty suites, freestanding Homes, redwood and log fires, an outdoor heated pool facing the Tetons and a winter ski lounge in Teton Village. At the base of the mountain, Caldera House offers club suites and alpine residences with the tram as its front door. Some households take both in one week, the butte for quiet and the village for skiing. Our Jackson Hole guide covers the valley, Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

Raffl’s St. Antoner Hof and Raffl’s Tyrolhotel, St. Anton am Arlberg. In the village where Alpine skiing was born, the Raffl family keeps two houses on the main street, a few steps from each other and a short walk from the lifts of Ski Arlberg. Raffl’s St. Antoner Hof, kept by the family since 1969, has suites with open fires, a bar that is a village institution, Raffl’s Eat Art cooking around an open fire, and a chalet of its own for families. Raffl’s Tyrolhotel is the more colourful sibling, with roof-top suites, a 225 square metre Royal Suite with a private sauna on its terrace and an outdoor pool reached by tunnel. See St. Anton am Arlberg.

Hotel Villa Honegg, Lake Lucerne. On the Bürgenstock in Central Switzerland, 914 metres above Lake Lucerne, Hotel Villa Honegg is an Art Nouveau villa of 1905 with twenty-five rooms and suites and an outdoor infinity pool heated to 34°C in every season, warm under snow in winter and open to the lake and the peaks in summer. It is a house for the quieter side of the Alps, with Pilatus, Rigi and Engelberg within a short drive. See Switzerland.

BEAUSiTE Zermatt, Zermatt. In the middle of car-free Zermatt, beneath the Matterhorn, BEAUSiTE Zermatt is a Belle Époque hotel of 1907 redesigned around the golden age of alpinism, with sixty-seven rooms and suites, most facing the mountain, and the Tower Spa Suite over two floors at the top of the house. It is a base for skiers and mountaineers: 360 kilometres of slopes across four ski areas, skiing on the glacier even in summer, ski instructors reserved for hotel guests, and a warm outdoor infinity pool after the last run. See Switzerland.

Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, Alaska. For skiing beyond the lifts altogether, Tordrillo Mountain Lodge stands on Judd Lake, about sixty miles west of Anchorage, and flies small groups by A-Star into the Tordrillo Mountains from mid-February to late April, to runs of 3,000 to 4,000 vertical feet with Denali on the horizon. It suits strong intermediates through experts. In June the lodge returns for corn snow and king salmon, and summer brings the salmon runs and multi-generational groups. See our Alaska guide.

As a rule, the Alps and the Rockies ski from December into April. Christmas, New Year and the February school holidays fill first, and late March brings longer, sunnier days and softer snow. Summer opens the Dolomites and the Tetons to walking, and Alaska to its rivers. We keep the list deliberately short.

Our Journal guide to luxury ski chalets and alpine houses for winter 2026/27 sets out the season mountain by mountain, and our Austria guide follows the country from the Arlberg to the lakes of the Salzkammergut.

For the far places beyond the lifts, see Wild Frontiers, and for whole houses taken by the family, Houses for Generations.