The Big Defluorinated: April 2025

La Sapinière's hotel rooms each have an immaculate video of Mont Blanc—Europe's tallest peak. | Photo: La Sapinière

An image of a beautiful young blonde woman with big breasts wearing nothing but bright-red ski boots and clinging to the side of a snowy cliffside flashed across the projector screen in the panoramic breakfast hall of the La Sapinière Hotel, just up the grassy hill from downtown Chamonix. "There's nothing wrong with this!" Gary Bigham blurted to the audience of the vintage photograph slideshow. "It's art!"

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I was there along with approximately 30 other young to aging ski bums to take part in a “movie night” that La Sapinière intermittently hosts where locals showcase their work and get feedback from the audience on their work. This time, it was a retro photo reel from Bigham, a pioneering ski filmmaker and photographer who made a name for himself capturing the rowdy, free-livin’ attitude of the Alpine ski-bum scene from the 1970s through the ’90s. He has a reputation for being eccentric, fun, and quite loveable. Shooting mostly around Chamonix and Verbier, Bigham’s films and photos portray the lighthearted spirit of early freestyle skiing with a sense of do-it-yourself-grit and mischievous charm. He narrated the slideshow, giving us context for each vintage photograph—several of them quite ridiculous—as he sipped on a glass of red wine. And then another. The presentation was not what I expected but it was highly entertaining. I was smiling the entire time, and, when I looked around, seemingly everyone else was, too.

The breakfast hall at La Sapinière offers panoramic views of Chamonix. | Photo: La Sapinière

Patrick and Jeannie Cachat, La Sapinière's current owners, have been friends with Bigham since the 1970s when he moved there in his twenties. I met them shortly after coming through La Sapinière's rustic doors, crutching into one of Chamonix's most storied hotels with a broken ankle. I couldn't ski back home in nearby Courmayeur, so why not take a weekend trip to France? Turns out, it was the perfect place to convalesce: lovely spring weather with a sun-drenched afternoon and my ankle propped up on a veranda chair as I sat outside in a T-shirt watching Mont Blanc glow in the distance, munching on a buttery croissant. There are few views of the peak like the one from La Sapinière: the chalet hotel faces an open stretch of Savoy meadows with no obstruction—just a clean, majestic line to the summit of Western Europe’s highest mountain.

But the view is only part of it. La Sapinière is one of the last family-owned hotels in Chamonix. The Cachat family opened it in 1935, and it’s been in their hands ever since. Patrick Cachat, a descendant of famed mountain guide Jean-Michel “le Géant” Cachat, runs the hotel with his wife Jeannie, an American who moved to Chamonix years ago after they met. Together, they raised their blue-eyed daughter Ellika—who, after completing a Ph.D. program in Norway but since returning home, now helps run the hotel—and a son, in one of Europe's most scenic valleys home to some of its most intimidating peaks.

I'd argue that La Sapinière has the best view of any hotel in downtown Chamonix. | Photo: Fabian Bodet

The Cachats have deep roots in the valley—literally written into the land. Several peaks in the Chamonix area are named after members of the Cachat lineage. Their history is one of guides, mountaineers, and innkeepers, woven into the development of the village itself. On Sunday, with the warm rays of the high-mountain sun oozing in through the hotel's broad windows, Ellika and I sat down with a weathered box filled with generations of family artifacts: old photographs of glaciers and summits, 19th-century bills of sale, handwritten letters, even doctor’s notes. The collection has been passed down through the family and lives at the hotel—an informal archive of life in the French Alps.

It’s this continuity, this lived-in sense of place, that gives La Sapinière its charm. While the hotel holds a prime location—just a few minutes walk from the town center and across from beginner ski slopes—it feels miles away from the corporate sameness that defines many modern ski lodges. It’s got a relaxed, welcoming vibe—one that’s genuinely skier-centric. One evening as we returned from a fine meal at Atmosphère, a restaurant perched above the river in downtown, we passed a group of tipsy Brits stumbling through the street. “They are speaking in beer,” Patrick said with a grin.

Convalescing, French style. | Photo: SnowBrains

Inside the hotel, the energy is warm and laid-back; there's this certain lightness that the French mountaineers of Chamonix carry themselves with—like they don't take things so seriously because they live in a place where death is frequently in their faces. This is likely due to the dangerous nature of the activities they partake in daily. As a result, they seemingly don't sweat the small stuff as much. It's this laissez-faire attitude that gives these French their unmistakable charm, which is easily reflected inside La Sapinière's time-honored walls. And there's just something elegant about that. "We're listed as a 3-star hotel. But it’s more like a 4-star hotel for the price of 3-star," as Jeannie Cachat puts it, in her Bostonian accent that lingers with a soft air of French after-tones. The hotel's rooms all face the Mont Blanc massif with pretty, private balconies that catch the morning sun. The sauna and outdoor hot tub are just enough luxury to feel indulgent after a long day on the slopes—or, in my case, a long day on crutches.

Breakfast at La Sapinière is served in a panoramic room with 180-degree views of the mountains (the same room where Bigham held his impish slideshow that everyone loved) and fresh bread from Maison Bourdillat, a bakery just down the street. In the evenings, guests drift into the lounge for a glass of wine or live music from any one of Chamonix's locals, who you think just ski or do other crazy mountain stuff before learning that they are actually talented musicians on the side. On the hotel's terrace, skiers pull off boots and soak in the view with a spritz or a beer, winding down from a day well-spent on the steeps. It's quite easy to feel fancy in Chamonix even if, as a dirty ski bum, you are inherently not.

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Spring in Chamonix ushers in perfect weather to sit outside and enjoy the Good Life. | Photo: Fabian Bodet

The nearby access to the Brévent-Flégère ski area is another reason guests keep coming back to the family-owned hotel. For those headed elsewhere in the valley, the ski bus stops just outside La Sapinière's patio that faces Mont Blanc. Year-round, paragliders land in the field out front, and trailheads for hiking and biking are just a few minutes away. This, on top of the hotel's cozy feel, gives it the sense that it has a little bit of something for everyone who walks in through its historic doors.

To me, La Sapinière feels like the people running the place care more about you than your check-in time. They’ll hand you your room key, sure—but they’ll also explain to you their favorite trails, make a call to a guide they trust, or send you to a restaurant that still slices its cheese by hand. Not because it’s a perk, but because that’s what you do when someone shows up in your home asking what’s good.

My room at La Sapinière had a stellar view of the Mont Blanc Massif. | Photo: SnowBrains

The Cachat family's involvement in Chamonix dates back to the 18th century. | Photo: SnowBrains

The staff of this place is a family—literally. And they treat guests more like neighbors than bookings. You feel it in the way Patrick lingers to chat about his proud Chamonix heritage, in the way Jeannie tells you stories about watching icons like Glenn Plake and Gary Bigham ski in the ‘80s, and in the way Ellika explains where the croissants came from. These folks know the mountains. They’ve lived them. Raised their kids in their shadow. They've known passionate love and tragic loss under these lofty peaks that are equally as beautiful as they are damned. All the while, the hotel's walls stand firmly in place—planted in the ground as deeply as the Cachat family's roots, going back to some of Chamonix's very first mountaineers who bravely danced with giants like Mont Blanc and the Aiguille du Midi.

Yet, in a town that’s fast becoming polished and pricey, La Sapinière holds true; there’s no fake rustic charm here—no designer flannel cushions for sale in the lobby. Just timeworn floorboards, a few creaks in the stairs, and a kind of lived-in ease that feels earned. It’s a place where a slideshow from an eccentric Chamonix freeskiing legend can follow a morning of croissants and glacier views, where the old and the new drink from the same bottle of wine and no one’s in a hurry to finish their glass.

It’s easy to be seduced by Chamonix—the sharp peaks, the high-speed lifts, the après bars filled with tight-fitting Gore-Tex, and thrilling stories of brutal climbs and daring descents. But if you want to feel the soul of a place you have to get to know its people. And, in my opinion, there's no better place to do that in Chamonix than at La Sapinière. You just so happen to get a front-row seat to Mont Blanc, too.

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To book a stay at La Sapinière in Chamonix, visit the historic family-run hotel's website https://www.chalethotelsapinierechamonix.com/fr