May, 2003--Late last March Jen Logan, photographer Butch Adams (you can see his pictures in the Black Diamond catalogs), John Lee, and I went to Switzerland and France to ski... and especially to ski the Haute Route. I’m going to describe our trip chronologically, but I’ll highlight useful information so that you can read only what you are interested in, if you are in a hurry.

First, an admission: I’m afraid of heights. As luck would have it, most of the really frightening parts of our ski trip in the Alps involved ladders, stairs and traverses. For instance, that four story high steel ladder up that cliff at Pas de Chevres. But more about that later.

We arrived at the Geneva airport at about 9 AM after a night of little sleep and a time change. A long-time world wide web friend of John’s, Yugi, picked us up at the airport and whisked us off into the mountains. We had planned to go right away to a ski area in Switzerland, but there was an extreme snowboard competition going on and John and I had not been able to find a room in town. As a result Yugi had arranged that we spend our first two nights in Europe in mountain cabanes. He insisted that a nice hike would help us get over our jet lag. We met another telemarker, Joe, and drove to the Champex ski area. We took a lift up and skied to the trailhead for Cabane du Trient. We put our skins on our skis at about 2:30 and started climbing. Yugi said that we had “about 1000 meters” (3300 feet) to climb, and that the cabane was “just around the corner.” Six hours and 5000 feet later we arrived at the Cabane. We had climbed up onto a glacier, over a col, and across the bergschrund at the edge of the glacier using a rope. Then we put our crampons on and strapped our skis to our packs and climbed up a steep, hard packed face. When the pitch became skiable again we put our skis back on and climbed the rest of the way up to the Cabane. I was so tired during the last half hour of the climb that I tried to sleep while I walked. But the night was not cold and the stars were beautiful. When we finally arrived the Cabane was warm and pleasant.

As soon as I could think again I realized that I had entered a world of skiing on a different level than what I had done in the Wasatch Mountains outside Salt Lake City. I was used to avalanche danger, but not to glaciers. I had never roped up to cross a bergschrund. I had rarely needed my crampons. I had climbed 5000 feet in a day, but never as a single ascent. Both the dangers and the scale of skiing in the Alps were grander than what I was accustomed to.

We were too late for dinner at the cabane, but the guardian kindly made something for us to eat. I slept like a dead person, until it was time for breakfast at about 7:30 the next morning. As yugi promised, jet lag was not a problem.

The Cabanes with caretakers serve breakfast and dinner and cost about 45 E per person/per night, including meals. Blankets are provided but are used over and over, so a silk sleeping bag liner is nice to have. Guests sleep on long communal bunk beds with mattresses right next to each other. In the morning you can buy water and food for the next day’s travel. The Cabanes we stayed at were pleasant but basic. There is often no water for washing and the toilet is an outhouse. There are also unstaffed "bivouacs," in these places you need to bring and prepare your own food, as well as build your own fire.

Maps: The excellent “Carte Nationale de la Suisse avec Intineraires de Ski” 1: 50 000 maps include a list of Cabanes with the number of people they accommodate, their altitudes and their phone numbers.

The next morning we climbed up the ridge right behind the cabane and skied east facing corn. Next we climbed up a ridge to our left and up to the top of a north facing couloir overlooking part of the ascent we had made the day before. The couloir was long, steep, and filled with powder and carvable windpack. From where we were we could see the standard Haute Route descent from Cabane du Trient. It crossed mild terrain covered with nasty refrozen ski tracks, even though you could ski the couloir we were in and get to the same place. I should have taken that as an ominous sign about the Route, but I did not. Yugi, however, did try to warn us.

The couloir was steep. The first 1000 feet were around 40 degrees. Below it moderated to about 35 degrees for another 1000 feet. Yugi entered it first and made it look easy. I was to discover that he skied everything in the same nonchalant way, from steep difficult snow to the slopes we skied with his 6 year old. I skied in my turn. The snow was good and the couloir seemed gloriously endless. After we came out of it onto a wider open slope we made a series of traverses and descents to the east, keeping to the better snow. There was a final easy ski through corn to a restaurant. By noon we were eating fondu and drinking wine in the sunshine. A most pleasant and enjoyable morning.

From Champex we drove steep windy roads to Le Chable. There are many vineyards in the area. Some of them are on slopes as steep as 35 degrees. I can imagine skiing them, but I can’t imagine working in them. In Le Chable we met our companions for the Haute Route, Jen and Butch. We all took the big cable car up to Verbier, and then took lifts up to the Refuge du Glacier Tortin, where we spent the night. The next morning we booted up a slope east of the Refuge. To get onto the first face we were to ski, we had to side step out onto a rock over a drop and rocket steeply down onto a traverse. This is exactly the kind of skiing that makes me nervous. I had the help of a loop of webbing to hold on to as I side stepped and I was fine. We skied quite a long day with two long, steep descents. My favorite was a corn snow pitch about forty degrees steep called Super Bowl. After a heinous final descent through steep brush and trees we reached the little town of Fionnay just after the last bus left. Fionnay consists of a few old fashioned wooden buildings in a beautiful deep valley. It is attached to the rest of the civilized world by a steep one-lane road. We had a drink there and took a taxi back to Verbier to pick up our cars.

I heard a sound and turned around. Where John had been, behind me, there was nothing but a gaping hole. He had fallen into a crevasse. I called his name and started going toward the hole when the guide saw what had happened and told me to stop. He went over to the crevasse. John yelled up that he was OK. With the help of another group of skiers the guide got a rope down to him and he tied it to his climbing harness.

John had fallen about 20 feet and landed on a snow bridge. He could move around, but his skis were stuck in the snow. It took about an hour to get John out. He got his skis loose and passed them out of the crevasse, and started to climb up. A rescue helicopter came, called by another helicopter that saw the accident. Two guys in serious looking glacier outfits got out and efficiently set up an anchor. They pulled John the final few feet up. They recorded John’s name and date of birth. He is permanently inscribed on the long list of people who have fallen into crevasses near Chamonix.

Top right: looking up from inside the crevasse. Bottom right: looking down. Photos: John Lee

John did not even break a ski, but one of his knees was banged and swollen. Butch and Jen skied for the afternoon, while John, myself and the guide went to the doctor. John still wanted to ski. The doctor examined him, x-rayed him, drained fluid from his knee, gave him a shot of cortisone and told him he could ski. That night we had a heated meeting with the guide. We were not happy about what had happened, but we finally decided to begin the Haute Route again the next day in Verbier.

The next time John was on a glacier he had a visceral response to it. He said he was aware of every little depression in the snow and he felt that the glacier wanted to swallow him. It was an irrational, rational, and very powerful reaction that gradually wore off.

There are some odd and interesting obstacles along the Haute Route. For instance, there is an iron ladder about four stories high that you have to climb at Pas de Chevres. And ascending to the Cabane de Bertole requires walking along a rock ledge and an exposed climb up a ladder and some very steep steps. The Swiss kids who were there at the same time as us scampered down from the caban while I gripped the handrails, white knuckled, and inched down like a crab.

You can stay in the cabanes, but there are also opportunities to descend to towns and stay in a hotel for the night.

Right:Jen waiting to climb the ladder. Note the two other skiers below her. Photo: Butch Adams

We wanted to do some side skiing along the route, but that seemed to be difficult to arrange. For the most part the guides have a fixed idea about what the Haute Route is and that is what they expect to do. My suggestion to those of you who might want to ski the Haute Route is this: do the standard Route on light gear and don’t worry about challenging descents. Then spend some more time skiing out of one hut or from a ski area and do some peak bagging and steep skiing.

Right: Parfleuri, a really nice hut. Photo: Butch Adams

Guides: We were mismatched with our guide. We did not communicate well, and he said “no” to everything John and I suggested doing. This certainly colors my thoughts about guides. So, why would you want a guide? We wanted one because we are unfamiliar with glacier travel and because we thought we would get to ski things we would not dare to ski by ourselves if we went with someone who knew the area. We figured the guide would know where the good slopes and good snow were. We had both a negative reason (we did not know how to be safe) and a positive reason (finding good skiing) to want a guide. In fact, there is avalanche danger, glacier danger and weather danger on the Haute Route. We experienced only glacier danger, but it's easy to see that a guide can help manage the other two hazards. A guide could help you decide whether or not you could travel in bad weather, for instance.

As to the guide helping us do things we could not have done by ourselves, I was totally deluded. Our conversations with the guide went like this: “Yugi suggested that we take this route, can we do that?” “It would take two extra days. No.” “We have the time.” “I don’t think it is a good way to go. No.” He discouraged John and I from doing some extra skiing after we arrived at a hut and tried to convince us that the snow was not good. We skied anyway and it was great. He even said “No” when we wanted to stop in a café on the Zermatt ski slopes to have a beer and admire the hanging glacier we had just skied below. We stopped anyway.

Another guide said that part of the guide’s job is to push the client. The guide needs to push enough so that the client feels a sense of accomplishment, but not so much that he or she freaks out. On our trip Yugi succeeded in doing that for me. But the guide did not even try.

Because we did not succeed in finding an appropriate guide, I don’t know what to tell the reader about how to do it. All I can say is be aware. Our guide sounded like he wanted to do what John and I wanted to do, but he did not. I would suggest asking for a specific itinerary, with the understanding that changes might be necessary due to weather. Despite our disappointment, we really enjoyed the trip. It was just that it could have been better and it was not what we had spent months asking for.

After our traverse we returned to Vallorcine. Jen and Butch rented a car and took off for other adventures. We did a very nice day of touring from Chamonix to Le Buet, near our hotel, on our own. We planned it using the map. We found other places we wanted to tour, but we were prevented by stormy weather and low visibility. One day we skied from the Grand Montets lift with another denizen of Telemarktips, Peter M. While we were waiting for Peter M. John started talking to another telemark skier who turned out also to be Peter. Pieter, rather. That day the top and bottom of the mountain were clear, but a cloud obscured the middle. Pieter led us around the slopes and the glacier and through the cloud at quite a clip. We found some really nice snow and had a great day thanks to him. It was the first time we had skied on the Argentiere Glacier since John fell into the crevasse.

On Friday night we met Yugi once again, and on Saturday morning we went to Verbier with Yugi, Anna, six year old Yannick and Pavel, a Russian snowboarder. Except for a trip up a boot track called “Stairway” and down a very steep couloir, we skied the rest of the weekend together. Yannick climbed and skied off piste with us. At times Yugi climbed with Yannick on his shoulders, or kept him safe with a rope clipped to the climbing harness Yannick wears when he skis.

Skiing: The skiing we did required long climbs, steep traverses, climbing over rocks on skis, steep entries into couloirs, booting, climbing in crampons, climbing with ski crampons, side slipping, and roped climbing as well as skiing down steep slopes and turning. I have always concentrated on perfecting my turns. When I ski people almost always tell me how pretty my turns are. On this trip I really understood that being a good skier does not just mean making good turns. If you only have an opportunity to ski inbounds or on piste, making good turns may be enough. But if you are skiing in the Alps all of the other skills of skiing are as important as your turns. I won’t consider myself a good skier, a complete skier, until my other skills catch up with my turns.

Snow: We skied many kinds of snow, and sometimes the snow changed often and abruptly. There was a slope that changed from creamy snow to wind crust with just a slight change of angle, for instance. I really want to be able to ski all snows. I think it is part of being a good skier. It seems to me that part of the trick is really feeling the snow through your feet. It is delicious and sensual to feel it change from one thing to another, and magical to be able to respond appropriately.

We spent the night in Verbier and we had two great days of skiing there. We took advantage of the non-driving evening to enjoy the local food and drink. We ended up in a restaurant where older locals ate and sang. We witnessed some pretty rowdy singing and carrying on by the over fifty crowd.

The second day we took a relaxed tour that included some long slopes of good turns. We lunched in the sun on a slope high above a reservoir. Our whole day required only one lift served ascent. On Monday we returned to the airport in Geneva for our return flight, and after a night in New York we were back in Salt Lake City.

Details, details: A few great things we found: Vallorcine, France: close to Argentiere and Chamonix, but much smaller and cheaper. If you stay there, or in even smaller Le Buet, your hotel will give you a free pass for the train that takes you to the ski areas. At one end of the train line is St. Gervais. There is a hot spring there that we did not visit, but it seems like it would make a great non-ski day trip. The Three Bears Farm in Vallorcine: an absolutely fabulous restaurant. The Atmousphere restaurant in Chamonix: ditto, but more expensive.

Resources:
Guide books: The Haute Route by Peter Cliff (Cordee - Great Britain)
Alpine Ski Mountaineering Western Alps by Bill O’Conner (Cicerone, due out June 2003)
Guide services: International Federation of Mountain Guide Associations (www.ivbv.info)
Rescue insurance in Switzerland: www.air-glaciers.ch, see “service sauvetage”
Maps: Swiss Ski Federation maps, 1:50 000 and 1:25 000 (available from www.mapsworldwide.com)

Editor's Note: If you are looking for a quality guide in the Alps you simply cannot do better than to contact one of these guys, both friends of the site:

Hans Solmssen, Alpine Guides Verbier

Steve Hadik, Alpine-Guiding.com