Haute Route

A snowHead

What do my esteemed fellow snowheads consider the base level of downhill/off piste/touring experience necessary in order to complete a route such as the haute route.
Comfortable on all pistes in all conditions after 20 years, powder improving but steep couloirs could prove a bowel loosener for me, done no touring whatsoever, fitness needs attention but would be looking to train....any ideas, is it an intermediate tourist trail or a mountaineers domain? Perhaps there's only one way to find out...

A snowHead

martski,

This is just from what I recall my friends saying about it, fitness over finesse....!!!! The 'powder improving' definition might need clarifying.
I am not sure who on here has done it....but there should be someone along soon to advise more specifically

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Go for it. I stayed at the cabane de dix in April which is on the haute route. There was a group of English school boys, aged 15-17 and they were coping fine.

It depends on whom you might go with. Have a look at this website. Mountain Tracks is run by my old guru Nick Parks. They offer introduction courses. You can do a week based in Chamonix with three day tours and then two nights in mountaib huts. He can also arrange a haute route if you want to get straight in.

From the Mountain Tracks website:

You need to Login to know who's really who.

parlor, JT, 'powder improving' fits within the 10-12 continuous turns defn, fine on fairly gentle pistes but the steeps might prove harder, but hey if you don't try, how can you know?
Mountain Tracks site has answered a lot of my queries, thanks for the link.
Already got two trips plannd for the forthcoming season so am onto planning 08/09, can't complain! snowHead

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

martski, ... The Haute Route with Nick Parks ... should be like the film set of Monty Pythons Flying Circus .... Laughing

parlor, .... he is also a snowHead

..... helinick

You'll need to Register first of course.

What's the best part of the season to do it do you think? High enough for good spring snow and good weather and conditions in late March?

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

The later you do it, the better (generally), but also busier. Late March would probably be the best balance...

After all it is free

check hut opening times. not sure all will be open until into april

I did the haute route with the SCGB seven years ago and I see they are still running the same trip this coming season starting 20th April which was about the time we did it. The advantages of that time of year are:

- More daylight hours and a bit warmer.

- The huts are less crowded, probably less than half full. That helps a lot for example when everyone is trying to get their touring boots on in the doorway first thing in the morning. When we did the trip the huts were literally closing down no more than a day after we left so as Arno says you do need to check the opening times.

- I believe the glaciers are more manageable because by that time of the season more snow has fallen and some of the crevasses are better bridged. Someone who is better informed than me about touring might want to clarify that point though.

martski, I don't think you should expect too much in the way of good spring snow or good snow generally. The whole point of touring is about getting into the back of beyond away from the crowds and the haute route is great in that respect. I found it quite hard to believe that you could travel so far in the middle of Switzerland and have such a feeling of remoteness.

Most of the downhill however consisted of crud or slushy snow. We had a fresh smallish snowfall as we skied a shallow glacier on the last day which was great as it was a clear sky and the sun had not yet come up above the mountains at about seven a.m. Even then though the skiing was a bit too easy to be really exhilarating.

I hope I am trying to be realistic rather than negative and you may get lucky with fresh snow. The haute route as with many tours is about going for the adventure. Perhaps I am stating the obvious but you are following a set route to a schedule and you have to ski down what ever conditions you happen to come across, which is very different to day touring, where you are going off to somewhere where you know the chances of finding decent conditions are good.

But there is of course only one way of finding out if you will enjoy it!

Good luck.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

I haven't done the Haute Route (I have toured along some of it) but the general consensus is that there are plenty of tours with much better skiing on them. You do the Haute Route for the scenery and the feeling of really travelling through the mountains. This is some good skiing but there's plenty of flattish glaciers etc. And because you are travelling east to west there's always the risk of the snow being quite slushy if you don't get the timing right

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Consider doing it from east to west. Climb early in the morning in the sun and ski down just as the sun is getting onto the west facing slopes. I've done it both ways multiple times and like the east to west option better. There are better tours, but you are hard pressed to find a longer stretch of high mountain peaks and glaciers. Mid to late April, even first week in May, would be my choice. Physical condition, ability to deal with and stay comfortable in changing weather and snow conditions and a good attitude are more important than skiing skills.....but oviously the better you ski on the downhill parts, the more enjoyable it will be.

snow reports

martski,

I did my first hut to hut tour last season - 4 days including the summit of the Gd Paradiso. We averaged about 1200m of vertical ascent each day which I think is similar to the HR. but of course you do that for 7/8 rather than 4 days.

By the sound of it, I'm a stronger skier than you and I found the skiing undemanding - I think the HR is easier. One of our group was an 8 week skier, although much better than you would expect from that and strong and fit. He found the skiing quite hard work after hauling himself up. That said he managed fine. I suspect that you are a good enough skier.

The physical fitness side of things is if anything more of an issue. I ran a (not very fast) marathon in 2005. I commute by bike 80 miles per week. In the past I've climbed in the Alps and done multi-day back-packing trips. I found 1200m vertical skiing per day to be quite hard work. One thing that struck me is that skitouring is more about the uphill than the downhill simply because it takes much longer! Before you start, you want to know that you enjoy plodding uphill for 6 hours at a time.

If you decide to go for it then I'd suggest doing a weekend of touring first to get used to the kit and check that its fun. ALternatively, it might be better doing a shorter tour to start with.

Cheers

J

You know it makes sense.

martski, I did this in 2005, the week leading up to Easter, i.e. the last full week of March (aged 45). We did it in 6 days, but could have done it in 5 if we'd not split the last "day" in two. A few photos from the trip are in the snowMediaZone here

We had a fantastic time. I agree with pretty much everything jedster said. The skiing is mostly not difficult. The hardest was probably the morning of the second day when we had about 45 mins skiing down breakable crust on the Vallon d'Arpete. This was as we needed to get down early as we were missing out the Montfort hut to get straight to Prafleuri - which makes that second day a very long one. Another group that went down an hour or two after us had a lovely time with spring snow all the way. No couloirs to worry about, and probably only two very short wide pitches at 40 degrees. Most guides now take the route via Verbier, so missing out the Plateau du Couloir mentioned by geoffers. It also has the advantage that you recover a lot of the altitude you just lost using the Verbier lift system, basically saving a day. The downside is that you have a long traverse around the avalanche-prone Lac des Dix, so it's a very early start that day to get through before they start kicking off. We also avoided the abseil off the Chardonnet by going up the Col du Passon instead, which then resulted in a bit of a scramble up the Col du Tour Noir. We had a couple of guys with no climbing experience whatsoever, and managed it, although they had a bad time with vertigo. I'd love to do that variation via the Grand Lui sometime, as that taxi ride did take a bit of the shine off of it for me, but it does add about 3 days to the trip.

I'd particularly stress that you should think of this primarily as a mountain hike (not climb) on skis, rather than a ski trip. You'll probably spend about 10% of the time doing "proper" skiing, about 50% skinning uphill, and the remaining 30% traversing around contours, either with or without skins on. Approached like that you'll love the mountain experience, approached as a skiing trip and you'll just get frustrated at how little skiing you're doing. There is an absolutely magic ski coming off the Col de l'Eveque though. We got about 1000m vertical of powder snowHead

, about twice as much as usual as we did the variation carrying on down to the top of the Arolla valley, then skinned back up to the Bethol Hut.

For fitness, I cycled to/from work, 4 miles each way, 5 days a week from about now, and ran home a couple of times each week. This was pretty much enough, although the climbs up the Col du Passon and up the the Berthol Hut (in the afternoon sun) were pretty horrible. Sleeping the first night was also a problem, as it's just under 3000m, so I had a slight headache and was very restless. By mid way through the second day I was feeling fine, and actually lost about 5kg during the week.

This was my first hut-to-hut tour, but I'd done about 6 or 7 day tours prior to it. A few of our group had never toured before, so had a training day with the guide the day before starting out on the trip. I'd recommend though that, unless you've done some kind of trekking (say 10+ miles a day for several days), you should get a day or two in before really committing. If you don't like it you'll have a long time to suffer. If you don't mind a bit of a sweaty long-distance hiking though, it'll be an experience you'll remember fondly for ever.

jedster, I also did the Gd Paradiso the following year, and the Haute Route skiing is a bit easier, but the scenery is way better. It probably also helped that we were a bit earlier in the year, so the snow quality was a bit better - i.e. a bit less crusty than you get in April.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

There's a huge range. The best things for skiing and scenery I have done are:

A tour based in the Conscrits hut on the Tre la Tete glacier - we did day tours from the hut so you didn't get the feeling of traveling through the mountains but great skiing and great scenery.

and this one:

http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?t=26612

I don't want to slag off the Haute Route cos there's not doubt it's a classic. I'm just put off it because it's the one that everyone does.

Help!!

Haute Route

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