West Oberland Ski Touring Weekend 🇨🇭 April 2022

This is an action packed Swiss Alps weekend designed to give you an inspiring ski experience in the magical West Oberland and explore the boundary of where ‘ski touring’ meets ‘ski mountaineering’.  We run 5 separate weekends in January, February, March & April and this last touring weekend of the season provides both a culmination of this series and wonderful springboard towards our later spring high altitude ski mountaineering programmes.

After a 2 hour drive from Chamonix there is rapid access via the Leukerbad Telecabine to Gemmi Pass from where we immediately enter this middle mountain ski touring sanctuary and are able to enjoy the fine ski summit tours and comfortable base camp to the full!  The course starts with an informal meeting and welcome drink on the Friday evening plus equipment check before the very early start on Saturday morning…

April Alpine Ski Touring Weekend – Course Aims

• Enjoy 2 days ski touring exploring the brilliant West Oberland area of the Swiss Valais Alps
• Do some inspiring ski mountaineering journeys, ski summits, find the best snow possible and do some memorable turns and fresh tracks
• Refine the essential skills for ski touring & explore the boundaries of where ski touring meets ski mountaineering in this alpine touring area which also features some glaciers
• Spend an enjoyable night in a comfortable mountain hut / hotel
• Become more familiar with hut to hut touring and ski mountaineering to prepare for longer ski tours in future
• Spend a sociable long weekend in the mountains and meet other like minded ski tourers
• If time allows, finish the weekend with a visit to the brilliant thermal baths in Leukerbad 
• This weekend could follow on from either our classic or progression Chamonix off piste & mountain skills course and could be followed by, our Ski Gran Paradiso course

The itinerary for the weekend includes skiing the Wildstrubel, at 3244m, a major and brilliant ski touring peak with remarkable views across the Rhone Valley to the giants of the Swiss Valais.  There are various other enjoyable and logical options within touring distance of the Gemmi Pass which offer very enjoyable tours like the Schwarzhorn (3104m) or Rote Totz (2847m) and, if folk want to experience using crampons and ice axe as part of a tour, the Daubenhorn (2941m).  If folk also have time and want to finish the weekend with 3.9 million litres of water up to 51C then we can visit the remarkable thermal baths in Leukerbad on the way down!

Thanks again for a truly incredible trip – it’s safe to say we are still both buzzing! Saturday night and Sunday morning were spent eating the majority of the patisserie in Chamonix whilst trying to fully absorb and recount everything we learnt over the course.  I’ve just downloaded the photos – they are brilliant and an amazing momento.   On top of this was the amount we learnt about how to plan, gather information and safely continue on our adventures. I have no doubt this will be invaluable for the future.  Thank you so much.