This is how it normally goes. Up at 5am, a long drizzly trek across town, then a bleary-eyed wait at check-in, before finally - somewhere around teatime - arriving in the ski resort. Once there, the accommodation is generally as disappointing as the experience of getting there. Last year, trying to do it as cheaply as possible, I rented a shoebox in Tignes. For £350 for the week, my brother-in-law, nephew, son and I had about 12 square metres of floor. The hallway doubled as bunk space; the other 'room' served as sitting room, kitchen, dining room and bedroom combined. The best bit of the day was leaving the flat in the morning.
Never again, I vowed. Surely, I figured, somewhere in the Alps it must be possible to rent an affordable property in a decent ski area that isn't in a soulless apartment block with a dodgy lift and gives you some sense that you're actually in the mountains, rather than a chilly, high-altitude version of Torremolinos. Finally, it would also be great to get there without flying.
As it turns out, all these things are indeed possible. I tracked down a one-room hutte in the mountains above Schladming, in Styria, southern Austria. The hut, I learned, was a holiday home owned by a local family, the Aigners. It sat on the edge of woodland, far from any other dwellings. It lacked the convenience of a Tignes shoebox; with the nearest shop some 1,500m below in the valley, there'd certainly be no fresh croissants for breakfast. But, I figured, there'd be real advantages; the children could play together outside long after the lifts had closed, something that was very hard to organise in Tignes.
My wife balked at the prospect of a week in an isolated, snowbound mountain hut, but my brother-in-law and nephew needed little persuasion, so it was the same personnel as last year who boarded the Eurostar at Waterloo, bound this time for Schladming - via Paris, Munich, and Salzburg. It was, by any standards, a long journey - but, thanks to an afternoon wander around Paris, the novelty thrill of the Paris-to-Munich sleeper, a breakfast of hot chocolate and pastries in Munich station and the gradual approach of the snowy mountains beyond Salzburg, 24 hours of rail travel certainly didn't feel much longer than going by plane.
We gathered our gear and went shopping - only to realise that the clock was against us. To make it up the mountain to our hutte meant taking a cable car, and the day's last ascent was fast approaching. We ran round the supermarket, throwing cheese, yoghurt, bread, salami and chocolate into the trolley, then persuaded a local shopkeeper to give us a lift to the cable-car station. By the time we'd heaved bags, food, skis, boots and snowboards into the cabin, there was barely enough room for us. But up we went, and as we climbed, grass gave way to snow, and the peaks of the mountains loomed ahead in the afternoon sun.
Emerging from the cable-car into blinding sunshine, I wondered for a moment whether we'd come to the right place. I asked a couple of people if they knew where the 'Aigner family hut' was, but the question drew a blank. Finally, my poor German notwithstanding, one of the cable-car operators pointed out the house: a modest, slope-roofed, wooden cabin, forest on one side, a red run on the other. We skidded across the piste, avoiding the last of the day's skiers, manhandled our bags up a 30ft snowbank and finally made it to the front door, breathless, trousers soaked with snow.
The decor could not have been more different from what we'd got used to in Tignes. Everything was wood, polished, cared-for, clearly loved. On the table, in the middle of an embroidered tablecloth, sat a welcome bottle of wine and a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Nosing around later, I found an inventory listing crockery, cutlery, blankets, and so on - dated 1972. Three-and-a-half decades had turned the paper the colour of treasure-map parchment; various items had been crossed off, others added at the bottom.
The facilities were basic but functional: fridge, two-ring electric cooker, an ancient wood-burning stove (in the event of electricity failure, presumably), two sets of bunk beds, an old TV (with two fuzzy but just about functional channels) and a radio. So, helped by a large bottle of schnapps thoughtfully left by a previous guest, we spent most evenings devising our own entertainment: playing cards by candlelight and betting how long the roof-edge icicles would be when we woke up in the morning.
The house, with its dark-wood exterior, yew-green shutters and icing-sugar slab of snow on the roof, blended seamlessly into the surroundings. At night, it was eerily quiet, which took some getting used to, accustomed as we all were to the boozy small-hours carousing of skiers. And the view was breathtaking, clear north across the valley, with Schladming far below, to the Dachstein glacier. It is, as owner Helmut Aigner put it to me on the telephone after our return to the UK, as close to perfect as any holiday house has a right to be, in his words, 'just pure nature'. His father, a sports-shop owner from a nearby town, built the house in 1969, although tighter planning regulations mean this would be unlikely to be allowed today. 'We're very lucky to have the house,' he said.
Just how fortunate became clear as the week unfolded. Every evening after skiing, my son Louis, nine, and his cousin Joseph, eight, played outside in the snow. Much of the week was spent in elaborate and ambitious construction work: a series of tunnels under the snowbank, meeting in a capacious central chamber. When they tired of this, they used my snow shovel as a sledge and careered off the edge of the bank or pelted each other - and us - with snowballs. One evening, all four of us had an extended snowball fight in the woods. It was an evening of luminous beauty, with sunlight slanting down through the pines, picking out myriad green and grey lichens on the rocks and tree trunks.
In all, there was just one drawback: access to shops. Somehow, through cunning and parsimonious food management, we got away with doing only one extra shop. This, though, was an arduous journey, which I undertook alone. Despite my best intentions, I never quite managed to avoid giving the others a daily sermon about the sacrifice I'd made. Maybe I should have kept my counsel, because the result of my martyred laments was that I effectively put anyone else off shopping for the rest of the week. By the last two days, our breakfasts were eclectic in the extreme: salami, stale bread, old cheese, hot chocolate made from the last of the Nutella.
On the last evening, the boys disappeared for a long time, only for Louis to reappear at the door of the hut, breathless with excitement. 'Dad! Uncle Matt! Come quickly! We're doing front flips off a snowdrift in the woods. It's great. Come and look.' And, as we headed out to watch this display of mountain gymnastics just round the corner from the house, one thought flashed across my mind: there's something you wouldn't dare attempt from your third-floor flat in Tignes.
· The Aigner hutte can be rented through Interhome (020 8891 1294; interhome.co.uk). It sleeps up to four people and costs from £464 a week in the winter, quote reference A8967/200. Rail travel from London to Salzburg, including a four-berth couchette between Paris and Munich, costs from £285 per person return through Railbookers (0844 482 1010; railbookers.com). For more details on the region, consult skiamade.co.uk. Edward Marriott and family rented their equipment from Charly Kahr (00 43 3687 24883; charlykahr.com) and organised ski lessons through Skischule Hopl (00 43 3687 61525; hopl.at).
Perfect settings: more ski huts to slope off to
Interhome has a range of huts for rent on hillsides and in forests across the Alps, but if you'd just like to spend one night on the mountainside rather than a whole week, and have someone else do the cooking, try one of these:
RIFUGIO GUGLIELMINA
Above Gressoney, Italy
Perched at 2,880m, above the traditional village of Gressoney, the owners claim this is Europe's highest hotel. It can accommodate 50 people in double rooms and offers hearty, rustic food and quality wine in plastic cups. Try the cold meats with chestnuts in honey or the Valdostana soup, made with cabbage and Fontina cheese.
Dinner bed and breakfast: €50.
00 39 0163 91444; rifugioguglielmina.it
CABANE DU MONT FORT HUT
Above Verbier, Switzerland
This place is busy with skiers at lunchtime, but those in the know stay the night in the little rooms upstairs. Luxury it ain't, with token-operated showers that tend to cut out leaving you covered in soap, but the situation is stunning, the hut itself (pictured below) is beautiful, and in the morning you have the pistes to yourself for the first run.
Dinner, bed and breakfast £25.
00 41 27 778 1384; cabanemontfort.ch
GITE DU LAC DE GERS
Above Flaine, France
Take the Cascades piste and look for the sign on which is a button.Press it, and the owner will come on his snowmobile and tow you up to the picture-perfect chalet, which has five rooms and is renowned for its food.
Dinner, bed and breakfast: €55. 00 33 4 50 895514
KRISTALLHUTTE
Above Kaltenbach, Austria
It's at 2,500m, and you have to take a T-bar lift to get to it, but the Kristallhutte could be the most luxurious mountain hut of them all. The eight rooms are romantically designed, each with its own balcony. The dinners are lavish affairs - the chef says his hero is Heston Blumenthal.
Dinner, bed and breakfast from €75. 00 43 676 88 632400;
kristallhuette.at
