As their clients jetted off to ski chalets and beachfront properties, lawyers left to do the paperwork felt like Cinderella.

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Operated by the Kempinski Hotel, 15 luxury ski chalets gaze over the slopes, allowing visitors to watch the bambi-on-ice skiers slip and slide down the slalom or applaud the smooth boarders as they twist and carve their way down.

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At some ski resorts, the older guns could be heard in expensive chalets 3km away.

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But at the heart of this unpicturesque village 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, with its trailer parks and mining-town architecture, burns the pioneering spirit of mountain adventure that far predates the cookie-cutter chalets and sophisticated lift systems that have come to define the modern mainstream ski holiday.

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