Ski Touring encompasses a large variety of ski days, short little skins to access a slope away from the lifts through to multi-day hut to hut ski tours.

We run several scheduled trips where individuals can join a group, such as our Haute route trips as well as one off special trips that change every season. We specialise in private bookings though, often picking the ski touring venue just prior to the trip thus enjoying the better weather and conditions at the time.

Why hire a mountain guide to go ski touring?

There are now several dedicated skinning tracks at the resorts in the Chamonix valley, such as les Houches, Grand Montet and Le Tour. This allows people to ski tour up the mountain away from the piste before using the piste to ski back down at the end. The track at Les houches in particular is safe in all but the worst avalanche conditions and is a nice track zig zagging through the woods.

But to enjoy ski touring to it’s full potential, you need to get away from the resorts and the lifts. Our qualified IFMGA mountain guides will take into account current snow conditions to pick interesting and safe routes, no matter what your skiing ability os ski touring experience.

Every day also gives us some instructional opportunity, such as route choice, navigation, avalanche awareness and route planning. We have an open guiding style, talking through our decisions during the day.

Read more about us and our guides.

When is the best time of year for ski touring?

It is possible to go ski touring almost from the first snows, and many of the locals will be out in November! During the early season we are ski touring in the “mid mountain” areas normally, saving the high mountains for when the weather is milder, days longer and the snow is stable.

Ski touring on the glaciers also requires some good snow cover to fill and bridge the crevasses, which generally happens from February onwards. Every year is different.

So for shorter tours, or mid mountain ski touring (in the Chamonix Aiguille Rouge for instance), touring is possible from December, for classic high mountain ski tours you can normally start from early March and go right through to the end of April, or even May.