Touring Skills

Day ski-tours to compliment your off-piste skiing holiday

If touring is completely new to you, take the first step of spending a day or two focusing on touring skills and it should open your eyes to the potential it will have in enhancing your off-piste skiing experiences.

Ski touring in the Aiguilles Rouges, Chamonix

 

Getting used to the phaff of sorting out touring kitDon’t worry about doing massive sections of uphill skinning! The idea will be to go on ski journeys and about using the touring equipment to allow you to see the best the mountain has to offer away from the lifts, and do as much skiing as uphill work.

Having several changeovers from uphill mode to downhill mode helps you get used to the equipment; putting on/taking off the skins, adjusting boots and bindings all take a bit of practice to get an efficient system that works for you.

Hopefully, soon you may realise how pleasant uphill skinning really is! Gliding forward with each stride and not sinking in, distance is gained more simply and fluidly than if you were to be walking in snow.

Following a track that is at just the right gradient to make uphill progress, height is gained with much less effort too. Kick-turns, the more abrupt change in direction uphill, may take a bit of getting used to…but they will become an essential element in accessing those back-country slopes.

The other thing to get used to will be the downhill performance and feel of the skis with their touring bindings, and carrying a rucksack with a small amount of weight in it will feel unusual too!

Guiding Details

Tailor-made Ski-touring Courses – Intro or Intermediate Level

These courses would be based in either the Chamonix Mont Blanc ski area, the Val de Bagnes and Verbier ski area or from Arolla. They would run as a series of day tours and would return each evening back to the valley base. Later on in the season it also would be possble to include an overnight stay in a mountain hut. It is also possible to run these courses from any of the other ski touring venues desribed elsewhere on this website.

There needs to be a minimum of 4 people in a booking, with the maximum group size being 6. A ski-touring course can be run at any time through the winter season, but generally there is more time available December through to February and certainly this is the best time of year to make the most of good touring conditions in less remote locations.

2 day course – £160 per person

3 day course – £240 per person

4 day course – £320 per person

The price includes the hire of avalanche safety equipment (transceiver, shovel, probe)