Fire on the UK’s largest single-uni ski trip causes chaos for thousands of students

Famed for being the largest single university ski trip, the University of Bristol Snowsports Club (UBSC) annual exodus to the Alps is a Bristol staple, with over 2,000 students heading to Les Deux Alpes for this year’s trip. 

With an après line-up packed with artists including 4AM KRU and Jack Marlow, alongside varying events planned across the week, the trip definitely had some highlights – and some lowlights, as I can report first-hand.

The drama started before anyone had made it to the slopes with La Muzelle, one of the largest accommodations provided for the trip, catching alight on Saturday 5th April, the same day skiers were due to move in. 

The fire started at between 1 and 2pm, allegedly as the result of a faulty heater being placed too close to some sheets. Fire crews quickly arrived on the scene in an attempt to control the blaze.

Thankfully, no one was injured, although it spread quickly through the wooden building which left over 500 students without accommodation.

My group and I arrived at the resort at around 1pm and, after dropping off luggage and picking up skis, spent the afternoon in the pub since we’d been told we couldn’t move into our accommodation until 6pm.

With a backdrop of sirens and smoke, we were initially oblivious to the fate of our own flats, although rumours quickly spread that we weren’t making it into La Muzelle that night. 

As residents of La Muzelle, my group was sent an email telling us our accommodation would be reallocated and that we would have to wait the rest of the day to hear any updates.  

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This process was similarly chaotic, with some groups (mine included) given accommodations that didn’t actually exist, leaving us stranded without a bed and carrying all our kit.  

We’d arrived at our allocated accommodation at around 10pm, only to find a French family already living there, with no knowledge of what to do or where to go. Couple this with the sleep deprivation of the previous day’s 24-hour coach journey, tensions were definitely high.

After multiple phone calls to Wasteland Travel, who organised the trip, we eventually managed to get into accommodation, transporting all of our kit in their van. We didn’t make it there until past midnight – it wasn’t quite what I expected our first day to be like, to say the least. 

My friend group ended up split between a luxury apartment with a huge balcony in the centre of the resort (potentially making all this hassle worthwhile), while the other half were put in a tiny flat with bunk beds at the other end of the site, with students scattered all across the resort. 

Whilst Overheard’s comment, “since our accommodation burnt down, let’s split a chalet”, wasn’t far from the truth, with some groups booking hotels instead of taking their backup accommodations. 

UBSC and Wasteland were hugely apologetic for the whole situation, and handled everything really well in my experience, giving us a compensatory bottle of tequila to make up for the chaos. Having to rehouse 500 students in the space of four hours was a huge task, though amazingly, they did manage to deliver despite a few mishaps on the way. 

My group’s experience was definitely not the norm, but it makes a pretty dramatic story, especially as we hadn’t even fully started the trip yet. It didn’t dampen the trip either, which was one of the best things I’ve ever done, an opinion held by pretty much everyone I met that week.