The idea of a ski resort near the small town of Isola first came from a British Army ex-officer, and Olympic skier, Peter Boumphrey, in the late 1960s, after he discovered a basin in the southern French Alps on a map. The local village of Isola owned the land he wanted to build the resort on – a small town located at an altitude of 900m, with poor prospects for development as citizens were migrating to the cities. As a result of this, the local mayor was happy to allow Boumphrey, and the London-based contractors he persuaded to help him, to build a ski resort above Isola, as the land required was of little value as farmland.