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Haute route?
- Thread starter Sallydog
- Start date
santacruz skier
Angel Diva
No but have skied both places separately...
Be sure and post if you do the Haute Route Chamonix to Zermatt though. Love to hear about it.
Beckster
Certified Ski Diva
Wow Sallydog, I am stoked for you! This is a mega tour. Will you book a guide? With a group?
Or are you a mountaineer?
Six nights sleeping in berghuts and carrying everything on your back has me applauding you! I did a 3 day/2 night hut to hut hike around the Wildhorn massive last summer and was glad to be done after the 3rd day. I’m headed to the Dolomites next week for 6 consecutive days of ski touring but no peaks over 3000m and looking forward to collapsing back at the hotel each night. My day pack with 3 daily liters of liquid is heavy enough without any of the overnight stuff. But I do love my Ortovox Haute Route backpack !
Definitely keep us posted on your plans. I live in the Bernese Oberland a few hours away from Zermatt. Who knows, your experience may encourage me add it to my bucket list too!
Go girl!
Montanasnowflake
Diva in Training
Hi Sally,
I am doing the Haute route Chamonix-Zermatt this March!
One thing that I can already recommend is to book your huts EARLY (if you're not going with a guide). Start in December or even November.
We missed that and thought we couldn't reserve before March...and now we have only 3 out of 5 huts on route reserved. This means that our days are getting significant bigger (about 5000 ft of elevation gain and a couple miles more..). It seems that especially Cabane de Prafleuri and Vignette get booked out quickly. Without a guide you also have to organize your own shuttles (verbier, day 2) and a gear shuttle Chamonix - Zermatt.
You should feel good about glacial travel and navigation (white outs are possible).
I am very excited for the European style traverse and only having to carry my personal equipment and a sleeping bag liner aka DAY TOUR pack! I am very excited! Happy to report more in April :-)!!
I am doing the Haute route Chamonix-Zermatt this March!
One thing that I can already recommend is to book your huts EARLY (if you're not going with a guide). Start in December or even November.
We missed that and thought we couldn't reserve before March...and now we have only 3 out of 5 huts on route reserved. This means that our days are getting significant bigger (about 5000 ft of elevation gain and a couple miles more..). It seems that especially Cabane de Prafleuri and Vignette get booked out quickly. Without a guide you also have to organize your own shuttles (verbier, day 2) and a gear shuttle Chamonix - Zermatt.
You should feel good about glacial travel and navigation (white outs are possible).
I am very excited for the European style traverse and only having to carry my personal equipment and a sleeping bag liner aka DAY TOUR pack! I am very excited! Happy to report more in April :-)!!
VickiK
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Sounds like an incredible voyage, @Montanasnowflake , I hope you do a trip report on this site afterward.
Thx for posting, I can't wait to hear about your trip
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on pros/cons of booking a guide. Bon voyage!
AJM
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
How exciting !!! Please report back
Beckster
Certified Ski Diva
Hi Sally,Thx for posting, I can't wait to hear about your trip
It’s me again. My question to you is if you’re into ski mountaineering or basic backcountry skiing.
Based on your skill level, more accurate information may be offered.
Haute Route is definitely ski mountaineering and requires mountaineering skills. If you don’t have advanced mountaineering skills then it’s best to hire a local guide service. A group rate is of excellent value with all Hut & shuttle services included. The local guide companies over book the huts and have close relationships with the Hut Managers. Then they have more flexibility in case of bad or dangerous weather conditions. Although you will have to show up with your own ice pick, book crampons, harness and a few carabiners, the guide will carry the rope. He will also carry a substantial medical kit and backup battery bank for his navigation. Mostly they carry all the burdens for your safety. They have their thumb on the weather reports, avalanche dangers, changes in the glaciers, ice falls and snow bridges, and of course the ski and snow conditions. I just completed the first 3 guided ski tours here in the Dolomites with a small group from our Swiss Backcountry Ski Club. The visibility has been terrible. While our group has had their heads tucked under their hoods against the blowing snow we merely had to follow our guide who knew exactly where we were and had an acute awareness of leading us up the safest route. Same skiing down in the fog. Today was level 4 avalanche danger. We heard avi breaks all day and witnessed a fantastic billowing slide.
Right now I am enjoying a delightful aprés while our guide is diligently working the plans for tomorrow’s tour. For me a guide makes trips like this completely stress free.
Montana Snowflake sounds like she’s an amazingly well experienced mountaineer and nearly 30 years younger than us. All of the above mentioned extra equipment is not routinely added to my ski tour daypack.
I have 11 years experience using the Hut system here. I could write a book on what to expect and how to pack your personal items. Let me know if you want advice in that department.
I’m really excited for you!
Beckster
Not to say this is exactly what I needed to hear to share with my husband, but this is exactly what I needed to hear to share with my husband. LOL. As former outdoors guides, he always starts our trip planning certain we can *figure it out on our own.* Too many experiences are over-programmed now, so he's always circumspect about which should be and for whom. Your details are super helpful. Enjoy your aprés and dîner! Wishing you clear skies tomorrow.
Beckster
Certified Ski Diva
Hi Sally, just got home from the Dolomites and then a week in the Engadin/St. Moritz. Both Winter Olympic regions. We had only one day of good visibility in Torino but the avalanche risks were so high that it shut down huge portions of resorts. We ended up buying lift tickets and skied the entire Sellaronde instead of fighting deep snow on a low profile ski tour. But wow was that a fun and impressively stunning last day!!I Our guide knew the resort so well that we quickly skied over 40km and over 24,000 vertical feet that day. I’d recommend that experience to every skier!
I’m glad I could shed some light on the realities of risks and the benefits of hiring a guide. It would actually be a Burgfuhrer with the highest levels of certifications, higher certification than a ski or hiking guide. I don’t want to be negative or scare you because when it’s great it’s great like in all the incredible website photos, but nobody is posting the pictures from the ugly days. Just this weekend, conditions prevented search and rescue teams from being able to look for a lost group of 6 missing local Swiss touring the high route from Zermatt to Arolle. Unfortunately 5 of the 6 were found dead yesterday evening and today the search is continuing for the 6th. I wish I could say this doesn’t happen very often. https://planetski.eu/2024/03/11/six-ski-tourers-missing-in-zermatt/
Stay safe and enjoy it like mad! The alps are stunning!! And I think all of us Divas look forward to hearing about the Haute Route adventures!
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Chuyi
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
It is ski mountaineering. Figuring it out is probably not a good plan. The 6 people who died went out in bad conditions, a professional would not have taken clients. The guides know where the crevasses are & where the cliffs...
Watch The 1st episode of the documentary "the horn" is called the crevasse, the accident occurred on a clear day. The group seem to have experience ski mountaineering but did not know the terrain.
Misha at 9vallees speaks English & can set you up with a guide or a group etc..
9vallees.com
Watch The 1st episode of the documentary "the horn" is called the crevasse, the accident occurred on a clear day. The group seem to have experience ski mountaineering but did not know the terrain.
Misha at 9vallees speaks English & can set you up with a guide or a group etc..
Ski holidays, safari, ski touring around the world - 9 Vallées
Ski trip: safari, ski touring and heliskiing. Come and ski in 28 destinations, in France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Argentina, Chile
9vallees.com
Beckster
Certified Ski Diva
Yeah, like most mountain sports, risk assessment is probably the biggest factor. Last Saturday morning was really beautiful and the now parished group probably underestimated the time it would take to beat the forecasted incoming weather. My guess is that they were breaking trail that morning which of course significantly hinders ones tempo. A similar situation happened in 2018 when a highly capable and experienced group with a hired guide decided to take a more technical route to save 2.5 hours of time to beat the forecasted weather. But then the weather blew in earlier than expected along with a serious of technical problems. A few films have documented that tragedy which is worth a study for any mountaineer. https://www.outsideonline.com/outdo...s/chamonix-zermatt-alps-haute-route-disaster/
MissySki
Angel Diva
Wow, what an awful story! So many red flags and lessons learned in there.. just so terrible to think how it in no way had to happen that way. But hindsight is a very tricky thing as I imagine it was very different being in the group that day.
Montanasnowflake
Diva in Training
Hey everyone!
Glad to see there has been so much talk about skiing the haute route! And I also saw the topic about skills.
I just skied the Haute route (Chamonix-Zermatt) in March and put together a blog post with my impressions but also logistics information.
About myself: I started skiing about 3 years ago and I am a pretty novice skier, however I am also a Mountain Guide and get to go out a lot.
The haute route is a super common guided route and many newbies to backcountry skiing hire a guide there.
I wouldn’t say it’s a “ski mountaineering” objective but I guess that depends on how you define it. In the end it’s a glaciated traverse and route finding skills (imagine white out), rescue skills and avalanche danger assessments are required to ski the route. There are plenty of different versions how to ski this and the easiest doesn’t require the use of a rope to access terrain. Your standard equipment will be: crevasse rescue kit, ski crampons, boot crampons and avalanche safety kit!
It was a trip of a lifetime for me, incredible beautiful landscapes and the way of seeing every day different terrain!
Happy to answer any specific questions about the route :-)My blog post - Haute route
Glad to see there has been so much talk about skiing the haute route! And I also saw the topic about skills.
I just skied the Haute route (Chamonix-Zermatt) in March and put together a blog post with my impressions but also logistics information.
About myself: I started skiing about 3 years ago and I am a pretty novice skier, however I am also a Mountain Guide and get to go out a lot.
The haute route is a super common guided route and many newbies to backcountry skiing hire a guide there.
I wouldn’t say it’s a “ski mountaineering” objective but I guess that depends on how you define it. In the end it’s a glaciated traverse and route finding skills (imagine white out), rescue skills and avalanche danger assessments are required to ski the route. There are plenty of different versions how to ski this and the easiest doesn’t require the use of a rope to access terrain. Your standard equipment will be: crevasse rescue kit, ski crampons, boot crampons and avalanche safety kit!
It was a trip of a lifetime for me, incredible beautiful landscapes and the way of seeing every day different terrain!
Happy to answer any specific questions about the route :-)My blog post - Haute route
Montanasnowflake
Diva in Training
Here’s my trip report (it’s on the guide’s blog but the information is helpful if you don’t go with a guide) Blog Post
