To the west of the Mont Blanc massif, Les Contamines ski resort makes a great starting point for ski touring. There are many possibilities here, both from the valley and from the ski lifts. The Col de la Fenêtre is a classic crossing point on the ridge dividing Savoie from Haute-Savoie. It’s often described as…
As a ski instructor, I don’t want to add too many glacier ski tours to the site. We aren’t high mountain guides at White Marmotte, so we don’t take customers onto glaciers. (This article is purely my personal view, for information only). The Col des Rachasses does deserve a mention within our list of more…
With a magnificent setting, a sunny aspect, and an amenable 500 – 800 metres of ascent, the Col du Belvedere is a great introduction to ski touring in Chamonix. The route takes you from the edge of the Flegere ski area to the summer tourist hotspot of Lac Blanc. This famous viewpoint is much quieter…
This is another nice ski tour in the Mont Thabor range. We did it on the last day of the TipTop trip to the Drayères Refuge in April. This is slightly shorter than the previous route (Rocher de la Grande Tempête) and more southerly in aspect, so it makes a good morning tour on a…
The Refuge des Drayeres in the Mont Thabor range is a superb base for a few days ski touring, with plenty of routes suiting beginners to experts. The Rocher de la Grande Tempête is the first tour I did from the Refuge on a visit in April with TipTop Ski Coaching. The route is a…
The Pic des Trois Evêchés from the Col du Lauteret runs parallel to the very popular Pic Blanc ski tour from the same start point. In many ways, it feels like a longer version of that route. Both tours take you north-east from the start point along a sunny valley with the peak at its…
Few ski tours are safe enough to do when the avalanche risk is a high four out of five. Mont de l’Arpille is one of those that can be a possibility.* The mountain rises to a height of 2085 metres, which is quite modest in the region. It is just to the north of the…
For my first day off since Christmas I was itching to get out and do some ski touring. It still hadn’t snowed for a while, meaning that the snow was safe but not the most pleasant to ski on, and you needed to head above 2000m to get continuous coverage. The weather was beautiful though,…
My final ski tour of last winter was one that I had been wanting to do for some time. The Col du Replat connects the Selle and Etancons valleys which lead to St. Christoph and La Berarde respectively. The previous summer Jon and I had done most of the route in reverse, climbing the Tete…
Chazelet is a tiny but beautiful little ski resort with south facing slopes across the valley from the La Grave lift. It has five lifts, five pistes, and one very nice mountain restaurant. A reasonable skier will exhaust the on-piste possibilities in a morning, but the off-piste can be great on the right day and…
