Hôtel Restaurant "Les Sapins" Wellness & Gourmet

Le Sapins is good solid French mountain hotel, with comfortable rooms and balconies with views. What really makes it special is the quality of the cooking and the friendliness of the family that runs it. It's been in the hands of the same family for some 60 years and they are very involved in all aspects of the property and were extremely helpful with all our requests. The Col de la Croix Fry is not one of France's most spectaculr mountain passes but it has excellent cross country skiing with trails starting right across the road from the hotel, and decent Alpine skiing with lifts right behind the hotel. It's all very well organized with every room coming with ski lockers on the ground floor. There's not much else at the pass: one other restaurant/hotel, two sports shops offering rentals, and a gourmet food shop. The area does have an efficient shuttle bus system so you could also ski at the much more extensive La Clusaz area. The hotel's restaurant is very high quality, both for filling local mountain specialities and more gourmet options. We took the demi-pension and were very happy with our dinners. Breakfast is a satisfying buffet (though they could do with some more wholewheat bread options). Our only complaint is that the wifi is really weak, and so is the local data cell service. It was good enough to read email, but that was about it. Downloading podcasts or skimming through websites was very slow. Forget about doing any online work from the hotel if it involves heavy downloading or video conferencing.