Tom Robbins leaves the crowded resorts behind to take on the world’s most famous ski tour challenge, a six-day ski trek from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn
Waiting in line in a packed piste-side cafeteria a few years ago, clutching a bowl of spaghetti and a coffee that were about to cost me £18, I had something of a epiphany.
Much as I loved ski holidays, I couldn’t keep ignoring the fact that the slopes were getting busier, the resorts more built-up and the rush to beat everyone else to the fresh snow ever more stressful. The roar of snow cannons and the clanking of huge new lifts were becoming impossible to escape. Skiing was still fun, but it no longer had anything to do with enjoying the peace of the mountains or getting out into the wilderness.
So I decided to leave the resorts behind altogether and take up ski touring. Sticky “skins” attach to the bottom of your skis, allowing you to walk up to the top of the mountain, where you take them off and ski down the other side. The need for mechanical lifts thus removed, you can go wherever you like, striking out into the vast empty spaces that still remain, often just over the brow of the hill from even the most hectic mega-resorts.
I wasn’t alone. Guides, instructors and holiday companies report a surge in interest in ski touring, from day trips to week long forays. It’s not just for experts either, any good intermediate with a bit of off-piste experience is ready to try touring.
And almost from the first step you take on touring skis, you begin to hear talk about the Haute Route, the most famous ski tour of them all. First skied in 1911, the route was originally devised by the gentlemen climbers of the British Alpine Club, and connects two of the world’s most celebrated mountain resorts, Chamonix in France, and Zermatt in Switzerland. It begins under the shadow of western Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc, and ends, usually after six days and 80 miles of skiing, with a total climb of over 4,500m, under the gaze of the Matterhorn, perhaps the world’s most photographed peak. Along the way, you stay in the dormitories of remote, high-altitude mountain huts.
Today the Haute Route is so famous it ranks alongside the Inca Trail, the Everest base camp trek and the climb of Kilimanjaro in the premier league of adventure travel experiences, ones that thousands of people travel across the globe to bag each year and that support a mini-industry of guides and travel firms. Knowing it was such a well-known route, featured on the pages of countless adventure travel brochures, I assumed it had attracted a fair bit of hyperbole over the years, and that stories of the crevasses, vertical cliff faces and extreme weather were all hammed up to excite the punters. So I signed up for a group trip with Wilderness Journeys, and arrived in Chamonix last March feeling distinctly blasé.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Day one was a 12-hour marathon that saw us scrambling up vertiginous ice slopes in crampons, skis tied to our rucksacks, in the freezing darkness. We arrived at the Trient Hut, perched at 3,170m above a huge expanse of glacier, at 9.10pm – exhausted, heads spinning from dehydration and altitude sickness, and in no doubt that the Haute Route was a very serious undertaking. That night, our guide Robbie Fenlon, told us that on average, only half the people who start the trip manage to complete it.
Day two dawned clear and sunny, and was supposed to be an easy day, involving a short climb, then a long ski down to lunch in the village of Champex, followed by a short train ride to Verbier, where we’d climb the slopes and stay at the Mont Fort hut. But we’d only been going half an hour, crossing the Trient glacier, when without a sound, the snow fell away like a trapdoor beneath our guide Robbie Fenlon’s skis. He had enough speed to keep going to the far side, but behind him, what looked like solid snow, was now a gaping icy hole, a crevasse descending to the depths of the glacier. David, who was skiing close behind Robbie, had to swerve violently to avoid it, while the rest of us stopped, then gave it a wide berth.
But gradually we got into the rhythm of a long tour – starting early, moving slowly and methodically rather than rushing and having to take breaks, and arriving at each hut early in the afternoon, to avoid the avalanche risk that increases as the afternoon sun heats the snow. We learned the etiquette of the mountain huts – where to store our equipment, where to find the slippers, and where to hang up our wet skins to ensure they dried out enough to stick properly the following morning. In high altitude dorms, we learned, earplugs are essential.
On day five, we woke early at the Cabane des Dix, excited at the prospect of the day’s climb over Pigne d’Arolla to the Vignettes hut, after which we’d be skiing down all the way to Zermatt. But when we looked outside, our hopes were dashed. The weather, which until then had been glorious sunshine, had changed dramatically overnight, dumping several feet of snow on the terrace outside. Worse, the wind high up was gusting at up to 75kmph. There was no hope of continuing, and like everyone staying in the hut, our only option was to climb the Pas de Chèvres (”goat’s steps”), a terrifying series of metal ladders bolted to the band of cliffs that lay between us and the escape route down to the village of Arolla.
Much later, after making it throught the blizzard and over the ladders, we found the village and stumbled into a bar, collapsing into its warm fug. Our Haute Route adventure was over, we hadn’t made it to the Matterhorn, but as we toasted our experience, the disappointment quickly receded. We hadn’t bagged the trophy, but we had found exactly what we were looking for – an escape from the humdrum world of the pistes, a taste of the wild mountains and a genuine adventure.
• Tom Robbins travelled with Wilderness Journeys (+44 (0)131 625 6635; wildernessjourneys.com), which offers an eight-night Haute Route trip for £1,195, including guides, accommodation in mountain huts and in Chamonix at the start and finish, and most meals. Places are still available on four departures this season, the next starts on 16 March. Equipment can be rented from Pro Ski in Chamonix (+33 450 536398; proskimontagne.com). For more on skiing in Chamonix, see chamonix.com.
