UKC

Hi,

We were thinking of going on holiday next summer to the area around the Swiss, Italian and French border. Perhaps flying into France and out of Italy.

Does anyone know of some good short Via Ferranta routes that I could take my (soon to be) 10 year old girl on? We will have a car and will get our own kit. It needs to not take hours of walking to get to and be something reasonable. She is into climbing and has done a little outdoors but mainly indoor walls up to 6a.

If you have a good suggestion I'll get the guide book

In reply to treforsouthwell:

Not exactly your preferred area, but there's always the Dolomites. James Rushforth of this parish has produced a very fine guidebook, full of bumper days out. Got mine two days ago - will be getting the kids out there next year.

Alpkit have been doing reasonably priced VF kit lately.

In reply to treforsouthwell:

Which airports are you thinking of? That might help tailor the suggestions.

I don't know if you know the area at all, but the Swiss, Italian and French border is the Mt Blanc / Chamonix / courmayeur / Champex area and is all high mountains and hardly any via ferrata at all. The above suggestion of Dolomites is the classic destination. I have friends that visited Austria to do some via ferrata which they said was of an easier average grade, you'll have to check that one though .

In reply to Hobojim:

Dolomites maybe possible, what guide book and routes should I look at?

In reply to Hobojim:

We haven't booked anything yet, so I'm open to suggestions

I found this web site:

http://cortina.dolomiti.org/index.cfm/See-and-do/Via-ferrata-Eng/

There seemed to be a few shorter ones here. It seems like there might be guides around too, does anyone know how you arrange a guide if you want one?

In reply to Martin not maisie:

Thanks for the nod Martin, very kind.

Treforsouthwell if you've not already take a look at:
http://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/page.php?id=6918

Cortina guides office: http://www.guidecortina.com/it/

Alta Badia guides:
http://www.altabadiaguides.com

Just give them a ring or drop them an email.

Have a good trip wherever you end up!

In reply to treforsouthwell:

I'll get my coat.....

In reply to treforsouthwell:

This may be a bit further south than you wanted, but you could try Briancon area near the Ecrins ( southern French Alps)

We have about 25 via ferratas in this area, at all levels, there are ones like the one at puy st Vincent which are designed for kids it is a mix of wooden ladders and bridges, mixed with the more traditional rung system a great start for little ones, and the some route that are a little harder but still with the rungs set for young people, and all the way up to long almost alpine feeling ones, even the longer routes don't have big long walk ins, I think the longest is under an hour, most 5 - 20 mins

So you could start easy and move up as she feel comfortable, there is a free via ferrata guide booklet that covers all the ones in the area, you can pick it up in most tourist info or outdoor shops.

Bing the southern alp we get generally more settled weather, briancon claims 300 days of sunshine a year, I think this is over egging it but it is good.

For flights the best airport is Turin, but if you wanted to fly in to France Grenoble, Lyon work to?

Other things to do here with kids,
if it is hot there are quite a few lakes for swimming in,
you can take a walk to the glacier blanc refuge at 2500 meters very suitable for kid and in a high Alps setting with the glacier blanc along side, there is plenty of easy climbing to, this area has over 3300 routes over four rock types so something for every one,
visit some of the old forts at briancon and there is the marmot road where you can go and watch some times Stoke the marmots, kids love that.

If you would like any more info please get intouch rob@dream-trails.com

In reply to ecrinscollective:

I've just got back from my first VF holiday to the Briancon/Vallouise area and I can definitely recommend it. Lots of other things to do, and we lucked out with 10 days of sunshine in September with no other tourists around.

Flew to Turin and drove from there in ~2 hours, a really lovely place, may well be going back again soon.

In reply to jonathandavey:

september is my favourite time here, quieter and still hot its a great month, to get out and do stuff,

In reply to treforsouthwell:

If you can read some guidebook German, the best is the one from AlpenVerlag. Which does have English-language summaries for each route. Anyway much of the info is in symbolic format.

At the least it's a rather useful supplement / corrective to whatever English-language guidebook you get.

Ken