The Haute Route 2005

In March 2005 I joined friends from Truckee CA to do the Haute Route, which is a hut-to-hut ski mountaineering route between the Mont Blanc in Chamonix, France and the Matterhorn in Zermatt Switzerland. Some of us skied on telemark gear and some on alpine touring gear. We were fortunate to have mostly great weather and snow conditions, which allowed us to complete the entire tour. We learned later that roughly half of the skiers who begin the tour do not complete it because of bad weather and/or snow conditions.

Prior to embarking on the Haute Route we got to wander the streets of Chamonix, sampling the most excellent French pastries and coffee. We also did a couple of classic day tours out of Chamonix, skiing the Vallee Blanche and skiing over to Courmayeur Italy for lunch. Both of these tours were accessed by taking the well-know Téléphérique de l'Aiguille du Midi cable car to the top of the 12,605 ft mountain by the same name. I've included some photos of these tours at the end of the Haute Route photos.

Our group included Jeff Brown, Faerthen Felix, Sue Duerkson, Beth Christman, Jim Herzman, and myself. The images shown here are a collection of photos taken by all of our group members. Our most excellent guide was Mark Seaton, who has been guiding out of Chamonix for 30 years. You can visit his blog at http://markseaton.blogspot.com.

As with all the photos shown on my web site, click on a photo to enlarge it, and to see a short description.