UKC

Hi all,

Still very new to this forum so if this is in the wrong place etc then please just delete/move appropriately!

My friend and I are planning some travelling in Europe in June using the inter rail pass. We are both very much into our hill running and hiking (with the odd grade 1 scramble that makes us feel like proper mountaineers) and are really keen to do some of this in the alps as part of our trip. So here we are, looking for some advice, if you would be kind enough to give us some.

We both have experience of up north (Scotland) climbing munros and are competent at navigation etc but have no winter experience. So I suppose the first question is; have we got enough experience to undertake a trip to the alps?

Also, what should we expect? from what I've seen on family holidays the mountains can be grassy slopes or rocky faces, I can only assume only the former would be on our radar. Would we require only the same kit we would carry in a day bag at home adequate? or do they require specialist knowledge/kit.

And finally, if anyone can recommend a particular area to visit that would be suitable, please do say!

I feel a bit clueless and as though this is maybe information we could find elsewhere, however internet searches seem to be dominated by companies advertising guided tours that would be out with our budget for the trip. Maybe we are just looking in the wrong places. If anyone knows of a book, that would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

Robbie

In reply to Robert777:
In June your main worry would be snow - many of the most interesting routes above 1500m may suffer late lying snow in gullies.
Webcams are very useful to see what the snow level lies, local mountain guides offices will tell you about problems as well. http://www.foto-webcam.eu/ is especially useful because you can go back in the history to see what conditions were like when you wish to go.
Navigation is dead easy because the alps are full of marked paths and it's not particularly easy or sensible to stray from them.
Do an overnight in a catered hut, it's normally a great experience.
Cicerone do some great guidebooks, there's no need to pay for anything guided.
Recommended areas - I like the Dolomites and north through Austria to the Bavarian pre-alps. Lots of great mountains with easy access and relatively few worries.
Summitpost is a useful website to open up your eyes to the amazing number of mountains in the alps - there's a lot more to the alps than Chamonix!

In reply to Robert777:


Yes, provided you suitably limit your aspirations to what is realistic.

The Alps are a huge and varied area, with all sorts of activities possible, including via ferattas (always secured movement up sometimes steep cliffs, with fixed gear, often professionally placed), robust walking, high mountain skiing, lower level technical rockclimbing and of course classical alpinism in the high mountains. So try to pick something that suits your background, which sounds mostly like robust walking.

In the lower Alps (generally up to the level of the mountain refuges where more Alpine routes generally launch from), there are frequent, normally well tracked and mapped paths, you can get pretty high on these, up to 3000m and above without the need to do anything technical. As the other comment said, June, depending on beginning June or end June, is a bit early and you may encounter snow and blocked paths, normally it will be possible to suss out the situation after a couple of outings and avoid likely areas of snowslope.


It can be blistering sunshine, walking in shorts/T shirts and possibly trainers or lightweight robust shoes. Or it can be grim, cloudy, dank, with lots of precipitation and strong wind. It depends on the weather and if you are on the North side or South side of the Alps, also how far West in the ranges you are (generally the further East and South, the better the weather.


One obvious area is the Aosta valley in Northern Italy and its side valleys. Protected by the Mont Blanc and Valaisan ranges from the worst and first of the weather, normally good paths lower down, though they get more stony and nebulous higher up. The popular ice-climbing town of Cogne is the start point for some excellent walks, and like many Italian mountain regions, it has lots of high bivouac huts which you can reach on paths and spend the night in if you wish, without booking or bureaucracy, though you will need to carry food and probably a stove to do so comfortably. Normally it gets very hot indeed in the main Cogne valley at that time of year, so expect to start a walk to the higher side valleys or bivi huts quite early, 7 or 7:30 in the morning, so you can get out of the oven of the main valley before the full heat of the sun arrives.

There are lots of other regions that are delightful to visit at that time of year, such as the Ecrins in France and the Engandine in Switzerland, of for that matter the incredibly stunning views above Zermatt in the Valais region, but for a first trip, Switzerland is probably un-necessarily expensive, though it certainly has some chocolate-box pretty or visually stunning scenes, for example the demanding walk up to the Schreckhorn hut.

You will find in some regions that June is a bit of a hiatus period, especially for the main guardianed refuge huts. They tend to be open around Easter for the ski-touring season, then close in the second or third week in May not to reopen till late June as the main Alpinism season starts. Similarly, campsites and the valleys may be in semi-slumber for the same reason. Quite a popular activity for walkers is to walk up to the guardianed mountain huts by their approach paths, have a beer there and then descend the same day, this is particularly suitable as often you cannot really see the mountains from the main valleys as the valleys are themselves deep and overshadowed, so you need to get up to the next level where the huts are before the main panorama opens up.

Obviously you can't get anything to drink or eat at the huts if they are closed, though of course you can carry it up yourselves. However most of the main mountain huts in a given area have a website these days, which will tell you (sometimes with a bit of frustrating searching), what periods they are open for. Most guardians will also have an email address normally given on the hut site (or the site of the main Alpine club in a country, CAF, Club Alpine Francais in France, CAI, Club Alpin Italian in Italy and SAC, Swiss Alpine Club in CH), usually the guardians are quite helpful in responding. If you don't know the language, either get a friend to translate it or write in English, with an apology for not writing in their native language - it normally gives a better result than pigeon French or German from Google Translate!

Hope that helps

In reply to Robert777:
UK summer mountain gear is fine for summer Alps below the snowline but consider boots rather than shoes as alpine rock higher up tends to be very sharp and loose. There are great networks of paths and huts everywhere. Paths connecting huts tend to be of two grades, the easiest being like a typical UK mountain path, fairly rough, and the more difficult containing stretches of grade 1 scrambling, usually with fixed ropes or chains as aid. Proper alpine mountaineering routes begin above this level. A great walk would be Zermatt up to Flualp for the night then over Pfulwe col and down into the Tasch valley. The scale is massive, like a moonscape. Patchy snow you should be able to cope with, just don't ever get yourself onto big, rock-hard snow slopes

Thanks everyone for the quick respsones! A wealth of Knowledge already- it's much appreciated.

Thankfully from what you've described, the snow should be not so bad as it is the end of June/ start of July that we plan to arrive. Hopefully being there for the start of the season.

The different suggestions of areas are incredibly useful, as it means we can make this part of the trip fit in nicely with the rest of our plans, however this is quickly becoming our no. 1 priority for our time away. We were looking at the Berner oberland which I think we will avoid now as it was mentioned Switzerland is particularly expensive.

The mention of mountain huts is also very thought provoking as it wasn't something we had considered and could potentionally save us a little money which is obviously sounds very appealing. After doing some research they also seem to be a great way to become more immersed in the landscape.

It's a relief that we are actually capable of this so long as we aim appropriately. What you have all said has really got us thinking and we may just cut out the majority of the rest of our trip and spend our time in the mountainous regions. Very exciting! Now for some more digging and thinking.

Thanks a lot!

Robbie

In reply to Robert777:
Can you go anywhere on your interrail ticket or are you restricted to mainline stations? I think you could do a lot worse than jumping out at Innsbruck, there's lifts straight out of town up to fantastic walking and VFs.
As Simon4 said, you need to get out of the valleys. For this reason I disliked the bit of the French alps I went to - the valleys are simply so deep and the peaks so high that you can't see anything in the valleys and you never get to do summits because they're covered in snow. The treeline tends to be ~1400m and snowline ~2500m or thereabouts, so picking terrain between those levels would be a sensible idea. Whatever you do you should get yourselves up high (3000m+) to experience altitude somewhere touristy like the Jungfraujoch, Aguille du midi or Allallin revolving restaurant in Saas-Fee where you can take a train/cablecar up.

As you've not got a fixed base then definitely do stuff in different parts of the Alps to experience the different scenery. French end is granite and pointy, Dolomites are limestone and 'castley'.

Doing 'hut to hut' means you can stay 'up' in the mountains without needing to spend time getting out of the valleys or tents/sleeping bag/food/stove. All you need is a sleeping bag liner, your normal walking gear, ablution stuff and some cash to sleep above the clouds in relative comfort. For me, the huts & lifts are what make the alpine experience pleasurable and different to UK mountains. Your average lift will take out 600-1000m of slogging hot valley ascent through pineforest with no views to deposit you exactly where you want to be walking, and a hut is no more expensive than a hotel in the valley.
The long distance paths (GR, Alte Via, Adlerweg etc.) would be a useful starting point although they will be busier than anything else and often don't go terribly high on their standard routes (there are high variations though). How are you with busyness, are you the kind of person that seeks seclusion? If so, you need to avoid huts at weekends / public holidays as they get busy, but during the week you should have no problems. Many Italian / Austrian / German huts have small rooms you can book / select. You're not guaranteed to be the only people in them, but during the week you're likely to.

In reply to Toerag:

Does Interail include the train up to Zermatt ? the Gornegratt? or give discounts on cable cars ? May make a difference to where you decide to go.

In reply to Doug:


Probably the Zermatt train, very much doubt that the Swiss give any reduction on the (very expensive!) Gornergratt railway, or cable cars in the Zermatt valley. Mind, the Gornergratt DOES give access to a fantastic walk/stunning view across the entire Monte Rosa/Frontier ridge, on a clear day obviously.

Many Swiss valleys are desperately trying to give discounts on all sorts of things, as the exchange rate is killing their tourist trade, but Zermatt still reckons that the Matterhorn will always draw the crowds, especially Japanese crowds, so seems to think that it doesn't have to.

But in any case, the OP doesn't intend to go to CH because of the astonishing cost, and doesn't need to for a first Alpine visit as there are plenty of regions in France, Italy, Austria etc that will give stunning views/activity without the need to take out a mortgage on a cup of coffee.

In reply to Simon4:
Don't know the current state of affairs but you used to get a discount on the jungfraubahn (50% up to half way, and 25% for the high bit if I remember right) if you had a Swiss Card- I was using the one that took you from the airport to your resort & back again. It then gave you half price buses, trains and (most) uplifts. Might be the same for the Gornergrat. You need a degree in quantum physics to figure out the best Swiss Railways deal though.
And the Saas valley has for several years given free uplift to tourists staying in the valley in summer, they might still be offering this.

Cost of living is still astonishing, though, I have to agree....

In reply to Robert777:

A useful bit of kit is those overboot crampons (Kathulas?). A lot of paths and higher cols etc are likely to be snowy and icy at that time of year. No point carting a pair of full mountaineering crampons with you - but these could save your life!

In reply to Peter Metcalfe:

Kahtoolas is the brand. After an epic bullet-hard snow patch ascent (Sfulmini 'glacier') I bought myself some edelrid 6 point crampons for that exact reason. Not had an opportunity to use them yet, but snow patches and couloirs can really ruin your day when you're not equipped for them.

In reply to Toerag:

I got a pair of "Haute Route" 500 gm ski-rando crampons mainly, surprisingly enough for ski-rando. But they easily cover for alpine routes up to say AD, I have even used them on 60 degree ice (NOT sharp end, I had a string above). Might be an alternative for this purpose, as they seem to have a wider range of function than semi-crampons.

I did sharpen them after a brush with iron-hard, old glacier ice though, proved very useful a few days ago when we met some very hard ice.