Haute Route & Hiking in Switzerland

[roadtripper]

Hey Everyone!

I'm currently thinking about a 10-14 day unguided hiking-focused tour of Switzerland next year for a group of six.....AND I realized that.....I know close to nothing about hiking in Switzerland.

The first destination I came across was the Haute Route, so that trip has been brewing in my mind a little bit. Have any of you hiked the "walker's" or "mountaineers" Haute Route, or done other hiking in Switzerland? Here are some general questions I have at this point.

(1) What provides the better experience, (a) hiking the Haute Route for 2 weeks, or (b) finding 2 or 3 basecamps and doing day hikes or short overnights over a 2 week period?
(2) How far in advance should one plan ahead with reservations for the Huts on the Haute Route (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1yr, longer?)
(3) What are the cons of hiking the Haute Route? (too crowded?, too expensive?, too easy?, too hard?, better scenery elsewhere?, etc)
(4) Anyone know of any awesome trip reports on the Haute Route on the internet, or has written one of their own?
(5) Anyone have any general warnings for hiking in Switzerland that should be known far in advance? (extremely rainy, better Alps scenery in other countries, not tolerant of American hikers, that sort of stuff).

All we know at this point is that we want to visit the Alps in Switzerland. We're open to any and all suggestions. Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks!

- Greg

 

[pudgy_groundhog]

I don't have time for a big response now, but wanted to respond. We did the Tour Mont Blanc three years ago by ourselves and loved it (pics/trip notes here).

We used the Kev Reynold's guide from Cicerone Press and it had everything we needed to know. Check their website for other guides and I'm sure there is one for the Haute Route.

I'll respond later to answer your specific questions based on our experience on the TMB. You can also PM me or halfmoon (Steve, my husband) if you want.

 

[pudgy_groundhog]

Okay, will try to answer some of your questions based on our experience with the TMB (we also spent a few extra days in Zermatt).

(1) What provides the better experience, (a) hiking the Haute Route for 2 weeks, or (b) finding 2 or 3 basecamps and doing day hikes or short overnights over a 2 week period?

I think this is a matter of preference and either would provide a nice trip. We wanted to stay in the mountain huts versus staying in towns, so the TMB was better for us versus a base camp in a town. The TMB passed through towns nearly every day and several times we overnighted in a small town, but when we could, we stayed in the mountain huts.

I think it also depends on what kind of hiking/backpacking the group is looking to do. If you are doing the Haute Route (or any other route), you are on a schedule and need to move from place to place. Base camp would give you a little more "wiggle room" if you run into problems with weather, tired knees, different interests of the group, etc.

(2) How far in advance should one plan ahead with reservations for the Huts on the Haute Route (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1yr, longer?)

Because we went early in the season (over July 4th), we didn't make reservations ahead of time and this was a problem once. I think the guide book has guidelines about making reservations. If you are going in high season it's recommended to make them, although I'm not sure about how far in advance. It was kind of a tough call for us because it's nice to know you have spots in the huts each night, but it also means you have to stick to a set schedule and you don't have much room to deviate from it. I would think several months in advance would be okay, but I would check with the guide book.

(3) What are the cons of hiking the Haute Route? (too crowded?, too expensive?, too easy?, too hard?, better scenery elsewhere?, etc)

I don't know particulars about the Haute Route, but in general I would guess you are going to see a lot of people. In the areas we visited, it was pretty developed (lacking a true "wilderness" experience you might find somewhere else), but the scenery was still awesome. The hiking on the TMB was easy in that a lot of the trails were nicely graded, switchbacked (unlike the steep, rocky, rooty trails of the NE) but also harder (at least for us at the time) because we had some pretty big days as far as elevation gain/loss and miles. Expensive is a relative term, but I would say the Alps for hiking is more expensive because the huts are going to cost more (but well worth it in my mind). We found Zermatt to be really expensive (the town especially, the mtn huts weren't as bad).

(4) Anyone know of any awesome trip reports on the Haute Route on the internet, or has written one of their own?

I would also try posting on the international forum on backpacker.com or even searching for "haute route" on pbase.

(5) Anyone have any general warnings for hiking in Switzerland that should be known far in advance? (extremely rainy, better Alps scenery in other countries, not tolerant of American hikers, that sort of stuff).

We ran into no problems being American (this was 2003). We rarely ran into people who spoke English, so having a French book for phrases/translations was highly useful. We passed through Switzerland, Italy, and France and the guidebook recommended carrying a French book if you had to choose just one. We ended up spending a day in a town in Italy (unplanned) and having an Italian book would've been useful too in that case.

Hope that helps!

 

[lx93]

Alps "Sometime in Next 2 Years"

Greg,

I'm kind of in the same boat- planning an "as challenging as possible but not technical" hike (death march type) in the Alps sometime in the next 2 years.

From skimming Kev Reynolds' "Walking in the Alps" (excellent resource), I have gleaned that you can still expect snow well into July, and lots of crowds (and accordingly high prices) in July & August.

I don't think you'll find not knowing French/German/Italian a MAJOR obstacle, though it'd prob help if you at least make an effort, after which your audience will break into fluent English asking you what you want. At least, that has been my experience whenever I have visited Europe.

Also, 1 book which I found helpful was "100 Hikes in the Alps" by Vicky Spring & Harvey Edwards. If you have to choose between this & Kev Reynold's book, choose Reynolds'.

One book which many people recommended, but that I put down after 47 pages, was "Scrambles Amongst The Alps". The English of 1871 (when it was written) was so tedious that I just couldn't continue.

 

[pudgy_groundhog]

I don't think you'll find not knowing French/German/Italian a MAJOR obstacle, though it'd prob help if you at least make an effort, after which your audience will break into fluent English asking you what you want. At least, that has been my experience whenever I have visited Europe.

I think this depends on where you are hiking. On the TMB we rarely encountered people who spoke fluent Enlgish (we spent most of our time in the mountains). There was one place where out of 50 people we were the only English speakers (in fact, instead of putting our name on our table they just put "Anglais"). At dinner there was a Belgian couple that spoke a little English and we talked with them a little, but they were just as lost as we were when the accordian came out and everybody else was standing on their chairs singing French songs. Overall we made it by just fine though with our little phrase book and a lot of smiling.

English was fairly common in Zermatt. On the trains they spoke everything in German, French, English, and Japanese.

 

[Mohamed Ellozy]

(1) What provides the better experience, (a) hiking the Haute Route for 2 weeks, or (b) finding 2 or 3 basecamps and doing day hikes or short overnights over a 2 week period?

The Haute Route, like the TMB, requires you to stick to a schedule, which may mean having to do a big hike on a day when either you or the weather are in less than optimal condition. Base camp allows much more flexibility.

You could combine a few base camps with multiday hikes to get from one village to the next, following segments of the Haute Route.

Or you could stay for a whole week in each of two villages, which would allow you to rent a vacation appartment. Every village has many of them, of all sizes, and every tourist office web site has links to the local rental agencies. For six people you would save quite a bit on food costs by eating in.

I have done it even solo, but large units are much easier to find than small ones. I read about it years ago in Walking Switzerland the Swiss Way by Marcia and Philip Lieberman, I seem to recall seeing that a new edition is out.

(2) How far in advance should one plan ahead with reservations for the Huts on the Haute Route (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1yr, longer?)

For huts one or two days in advance should be ample. For hotels in small villages more time is needed; I found that the cheaper the hotel the longer in advance you must make reservations. For a vacation appartment two or three months if you want a decent choice, the sooner the better once your dates are firm.

(3) What are the cons of hiking the Haute Route? (too crowded?, too expensive?, too easy?, too hard?, better scenery elsewhere?, etc)

Much less crowded than, say, Franconia Ridge on a nice weekend, you are likely to be hiking alone most of the time, with lots of company at the huts. Some days are pretty hard; the Swiss valleys go straight up, 4,500 of vertical feet from valley to pass is not uncommon. The scenery is some of the very best in the world.

(4) Anyone know of any awesome trip reports on the Haute Route on the internet, or has written one of their own?

• http://www.pardoes.com/climbing/whauter.htm
• http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dawndup/hauteroute.html
• http://www.nbfenn.freeserve.co.uk/pages/hols99.htm
• http://website.lineone.net/~skennedy/haute1.htm
• http://www.randoalp.com/zermatt/zermcham.html
• http://www.art-science.com/Ken/Alpine/C-Z/

An excellent web site on hiking in Switzerland (many, but not all, pages available in English) is Cyber-Noth's web page.

(5) Anyone have any general warnings for hiking in Switzerland that should be known far in advance? (extremely rainy, better Alps scenery in other countries, not tolerant of American hikers, that sort of stuff).

The Valais is one of the less rainy parts of Switzerland, but on a two week trip you will be hiking in the rain a few days.

You certainly don't need to speak the local languages to get around, but it does help. At the huts you may find many English speaking people of all nationalities. One evening I was having dinner when a young man adressed me in perfect English asking whether I was from the Boston area. I asked him how he could have guessed, he said that it was my LL Bean fleece jacket; he had been a graduate student at MIT for a few years!!

You ask more than once: "Is there better scenery elsewhere"? The generic answer is that if you want great scenery pin a map of Switzerland to the wall and throw a dart at it; go hike wherever it lands. Great scenery seems almost guaranteed everywhere.

 

[cbcbd]

Not much new to add here other than once again saying that anywhere that you go in Switzerland will be gorgeous and the hardest thing to decide is not "what" to hike, but "what not" to hike. Either way you decide you'll still be sad you didn't see the places you didn't and be immenselly happy you saw the places you did. Meaning, you'll want to go back... badly

Oh yeah, take me with you?