Bellevue Des Alpes by Nicholas Mellor

Where in the world can you go skiing before breakfast, before any lifts have opened, before any trains have run, and without have slogged up the mountain with skis and skins in the early hours? Where can you dine in a French ball room, listening to a piano music, retire to your bedroom and wake up to see one of the most spectacular views in the Alps? The answer is the Bellevue hotel in Kleine Scheidegg.

You must ensure you arrive before the last train taking skiers up the mountain. After that train the hotel is almost totally cut off until the first train in the morning. You drag your case across the snow to the stone steps of the Bellevue Hotel as the last of the skiers slip off down the piste towards Wengen to the South or to Grindlewald on the north side of the saddle on which the hotel is perched.

A dour receptionist greets you in the wood panelled hall. Once a visitor has arrived they are unlikely to be put off and seek accommodation elsewhere. The only two other places you can stay overnight on the saddle are dormitories. Once you have broken the ice with the receptionist you quickly realise that the Bellevue is not only in a class by itself, but also in terms of its style.

The corridors are dimly lit by table lights on cabinets containing books on the early days of climbing and alpine skiing.

The twisting staircase is an architectural masterpiece – each visitor mounting the stairs gives off their own tell tale squeak. The stairs of Kleine Scheidegg are only rivalled by Nijo Castle built in 1603 in Japan for the Tokugawa shogun, which features the "nightingale" or squeaking wooden floor. The castle floor was designed to warn castle residents of intruders. The squeaking floors of the Bellevue Hotel ensure the hotel staff have early warning of guests descending for breakfast or new arrivals.

The rooms are simple, warm and comfortable. The views are without equal. A roll topped bath with a floor of brown patterned lino takes you back to a another decade when the last major refurbishment took place.

Dinner is from 7.00 to 8.30pm. If you fancy a corner table you will soon discover that Frau von Almen will have already done a seating plan for her guests. A piano stands ready with music for any guests willing to provide entertainment for the other residents. Net curtains provide privacy to the overlooking mountains.

Do a ski run before breakfast. The absolute stillness of the early morning is broken only by the skiis cutting through the icy crust of the virgin piste. There is not a breath of wind as we pass beneath the vast north face of the Eiger, 1500m above, nor as we zigzagged through the forest along the piste to the little station of Brandegg. Nothing moved on the mountain, apart from us.

Imagine setting out to climb the North Face of the Eiger. The Bellevue Hotel is the closest building to that dark face, and the terrace of the Bellevue was the most popular place for jouranlists to sit watching and reporting on the early attempts to climb that most challenging of Alpine mountains.

If your waiter is looking tired at breakfast it may mean that at midnight he skied the 7km down to Wengen with a head torch. Wengen is still small and high enough for there to be no cars, but it is full of hotels, bars and night clubs.