The Pioneers

Henri Bellier, a hotelier at La Chapelle-en-Vercors, was the pioneer of the Col de Rousset station. In the 1930s, he set up a chalet on Beure Mountain, where ski hikers came to eat. It was by means of a sleigh pulled by dogs that the chalet was refueled. The enthusiasm for the site gave him the idea of hiring ski instructors from Switzerland every winter to teach skiing. The first ski lift on the site was a large sled pulled by a cable and a gasoline engine.The chalet and the Hotel de la Chapelle-en-Vercors were destroyed during the German assault of July 1944. Henri Bellier, seeing the little interest of the department of the Drôme at his station, Part of its reconstruction rights to build a hotel in a very small Savoyard village, isolated at the bottom of the valley of the Tarentaise ... Val d'Isère.