Villars bets on a swing, not just snow

The Swiss Alps have found a new way to keep visitors entertained when the snow gives up. At Villars, on Grand Chamossaire, a 12-metre-high giant swing now sends people out over a steep drop at 2,110 metres, with the valley below and the mountains laid out in the sort of panorama that usually sells postcards, not restraint.

The attraction opened earlier this month and is part of a broader shift in Alpine tourism. Ski resorts are no longer pretending that winter alone can pay the bills. Climate change has made snow less dependable, which in resort language means the lifts must earn their keep in months when skis are mostly decorative. Villars has chosen a solution that is both practical and faintly absurd: a metal structure shaped like an Alpine ibex, saddles, cables, pulleys and a release that sends three strapped-in visitors plunging forward at once.

Access is simple enough. Anyone with a ski lift ticket can use the swing. The procedure is not especially soothing. Riders are pulled back to a 90-degree angle, left hanging face down above the platform, and then released over the jagged slope. The result is a burst of screams, followed by the kind of view that makes people forgive quite a lot. Yannick Boudouin, 38, said the sensation of hanging there and then being let go was remarkable. Alexandra Henchoz, 37, who tried it with her husband and 10-year-old daughter, said she had felt a knot in her stomach beforehand, but once the swing moved, the experience was, in her words, incredible and like flying as a bird.

That emotional language is useful for marketing, though the underlying calculation is colder. Martin Deburaux, head of the Villars-Gryons-Diableret ski area, said the resort is trying to diversify its offer and create an attraction that works independently of snow conditions. Villars welcomes more than 700,000 people in winter, but only about 100,000 in summer. The aim is to triple summer numbers within a few years, which is less a nice-to-have than a fairly plain acknowledgment that ski infrastructure cannot live on nostalgia forever.

Deburaux said the resort had recorded record visitor numbers over the past two ski seasons, as guests who usually head for lower slopes moved higher in search of more snow. But the longer-term picture is clear enough. The resort wants substitutes that help preserve jobs, keep the local tourist economy moving and make use of the lifts that already exist. Alpine resorts tend to speak of diversification as if it were a charming innovation. In reality, it is adaptation with a spreadsheet.

The swing has been placed where activity already clusters, while other parts of the resort are left untouched for visitors who prefer a more natural setting. Hikers use the grassy paths, mountain bikers race down a separate dirt trail, and nearby a hillside fresco by French artist Saype shows a child drawing across the slope. Villars is trying to serve both instincts at once: the appetite for managed thrills and the desire for an unspoiled mountain landscape. That balancing act may be less romantic than the brochures suggest, but it is probably more honest.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com