The Chamonix – Zermatt Haute Route in 3 days

Mountaineering and Ski Touring are pastimes, or hobbies. I don’t think you could call them “sports”. Every time you head into the hills you set your own challenges, climbing or skiing a certain peak, or completing a journey through the  mountains.

At the end of the day its about personal challenges. Are you using lifts and huts to access the peak, or going from the valley in a single push? There are many ways to challenge yourself in the mountains, through technical difficulty, length, support etc etc

I’ve just realised that this probably requires an entire blog on it’s own…..

Yesterday I finished the famous Chamonix – Zermatt haute route with Paul Antrobus who I was guiding on behalf of Rob Jarvis (of high mountain guides). The haute route is a good example of setting your own programme and challenge. You could ski it in seven or eight days spending the nights in the high mountain huts, you could ski steep variations each day, you could avoid any lifts or transport.

Paul’s chosen personal challenge was to link days together for a three day “speed traverse”. This involved basically combining two “standard” days into one, meaning around 1200m height gain on day one, 1500m on day two and a big 2000m on the final day.

Obviously everything needs to be (almost) perfect to make a trip like this successful; fitness, equipment, weather and conditions. Paul is on a year-long mission to raise money for a cancer research facility in the UK – Pauls website is here. All this training and preparation meant that Paul was fit and ready to go on Monday morning this week, all we needed was the weather and conditions to play ball…..

I must have checked about a thousand weather forecasts and avalanche bulletins over the weekend trying to work out what the weather was going to do. The southerly “Foehn” wind coming from Italy meant it was very unpredictable, some forecasts said France and Switzerland would remain dry (the mountain chain holding back the weather) whilst some models suggested large amounts of snow.

In the end we delayed a day to let the wind die down before setting off. It would be a case of taking each day as it comes.

Day 1: Argentiere Grand montet to the Verbier Mt Fort refuge.

We arrived at the Grand Montet lift early so as to avoid any lift queues and get an early start on the route. We were under time pressure to get through to Verbier before the lifts shut so that we could access the Mt Fort hut.

We chose to go over the Col du Passon and across the Trient Plateau rather than the traditional Col du Chadonnet. Less chance of queues and less abseiling faff negating the need to carry longer ropes. It was pretty damn windy leaving the Col du Montet from the top of the lifts, and indeed continued windy for the rest of the day. The lift station was saying 80km/hr which makes it cold as well.

We skied down to the glacier and started the climb up to the col, knowing that we could always turn around there or escape down to le Tour if it got too windy. Luckily for us each of the three cols we crossed that day were sheltered from the wind, and were fine. We roped up for all three in case of blustery gusts (and for the steep snow anyway), and also used the sheltered gullies to sort skins and eat food in the shelter rather than the windy cols.

We skied down the Arpette valley with enough time for a coffee and tart before the taxi to La chable and the lift to Verbier and the Mt Fort hut.

Although this day probably had the least height gain, the time pressure to get to Verbier and the very strong winds across the Plateau meant it still felt like a “big” day. Dinner at the Mt Fort hut was pretty good!

Day 2: Mt Fort hut to Arolla

The traverse across the lac du Dix is one of the tricky sections of the haute route, it can have avalanche danger and conditions vary massively depending on the time of day you cross it. Leave it too late in the day and you wallow in soft snow and have to skin across the slope, below avalanche prone slopes.

So, we were under more time pressure to get from the Mt Fort hut to the start of the lake traverse before the heat of the day got up. To do that we had a fair bit of horizontal skiing to do and about 1100m of ascent. The alarms went off at 5.15am, and after breakfast we were skiing up the Verbier piste at 6.00am.

Paul was on good form, and we averaged around 500m/hr and so got to the start of the lake about 30mins ahead of our schedule. The weather was much better, but it was obvious the temperature was going to go through the roof. We could see people at the head of the lake who had obviously left the Prafleuri hut that morning. We didn’t waste anytime and slot into the ski tracks heading around the lake.

The snow was in perfect condition and we were soon having a drink and putting skins back on the skis. We then climbed the slopes at the head of the lake. These had had lots of people ski across the tracks that morning, and indeed we were catching the slower groups by that point.

By the time we climbed up these north facing slopes the sun was beating down, and the skin across to the Pas de Cheve ladders to access the Arolla slopes was a hot sweaty affair. We were up these stairs and ladders and down to Arolla by 1.30pm where Paul and booked us into the Kurhaus hotel. They served us the biggest Roti I’ve ever seen and we did our best to re-hydrate after the mornings efforts.

It felt pretty luxurious to have WiFi and showers, a good reward for the long day.

Day 3: Arolla to Zermatt

This was our biggest day so far, and needed to be done on tired legs! There was no way the hotel were going to put on breakfast for us at 5.30am, so following their instructions we let ourselves into the kitchen and helped ourselves to breakfast.

We were again skinning by 6am, up the valley towards the finely positioned Bertol hut. This is a long climb of around 1200m, with some fairly icy sections of skinning. We needed the ski crampons for one section, and managed to get across the rest of the icy sections with some tricky skinning. It took us around three and a half hours to get to the small col below the hut, and after a very short break we were heading up the large glacial valley/plateau in the full sun. Paul was battling some sore feet, and the altitude, but we made really good time up the glacier to get to the Tete Blanche where we had some fantastic views across the alps, with the Matterhorn taking centre stage.

Our climbing was done for the day, which was a good thing, the sun was again beating down and we had climbed almost 2000m that morning. Zermatt had indeed received a little fresh snow, so we had a superb long decent with every type of snow; powder at the top, and small section of crust, great spring snow followed by slush at the bottom!

We were at the Zermatt piste restaurant by 1.30pm, totally chuffed with our three days, especially as it had looked so unlikely at the start of the week. A beer, onion soup and cheese on toast in the shadow of the Matterhorn went down well, whilst we got plenty of looks from the manicured skiers of Zermatt.

After skiing down the pistes we walked through town and were in our taxi back to Chamonix right on schedule.

So a massive well done to Paul, a superb effort and a testament to his fitness and determination. His blog and links to his facebook page once again: Paul Antrobus 12 in 12.

Thanks to Rob Jarvis for organising and employing me for this interesting week. Paul and Rob have many more projects for the summer: High Mountain Guides.