Home | Travel | Travel Tips
Coming to the Chamonix valley for a ski holiday can be the best experience of your life, but you can also end up frustrated in enormous lift queues, off-piste terrain turned into mogul fields or lost in confusion not knowing where to go. Most people coming to Chamonix without knowing the area never experience the true beauty of the high mountains or the amazing ski runs to the remote parts of the Mt Blanc mountain range. If you are looking for miles of piste, perfectly groomed slopes and relaxing drinks on the mountain restaurant terraces, Chamonix might actually not be the best alpine resort for you. But for those anticipating a ski vacation full of powder skiing, adventurous ski touring, or unforgettable heli skiing, you are going to the right place and I will give you 5 good reasons to hire a UIAGM/IFMGA mountain guide during your stay. 1. Be safe! Most off-piste skiing in Chamonix involves skiing on glaciers, therefore the potential hazards of falling into crevasses. A guide will recognize these black holes and find the way around them. Having skied in the area all winter a local guide will know which routes that are skiable this year and which ones are ending up in a maze of crevasses. Skiing every day in these mountains, he will also know the snow layers from the very bottom till the last snowfall in most places. Therefore no need to dig a pit on the top of every slope you want to ski in order to determine the avalanche risk. 2. Avoid the crowds. High season in Chamonix can be very busy. A guide will know where to go and when in order to find untracked snow and avoid the lift queues. The off-piste areas get skied out amazingly quickly and you have to venture further and further away from the lifts to find fresh snow - but it is there if you know where to go. 3. Get information, instructing and entertainment. Getting successful as a guide you need to be good at entertaining people. A good guide will make sure you enjoy your day by challenging you on a suitable level, help you to progress as a skier and share his knowledge and passion for the mountains. 4. Go ski touring without planning. Ski touring in the high mountains is great fun. But if you do not have a lot of time to prepare and do research about your touring options you might never get out there. Huts need to be reserved, you need a plan B and C in case of changing weather, and you need maps and information about the current conditions. Guides have plenty of suggestion for you and they can easily adapt the tour to the weather conditions and your abilities. 5. You want to go heli skiing. Can you pick out a safe-to-ski 35-degree mountain slope with the perfect snow from the air? Unless you have a lot of mountain and skiing experience you can not, which is why the heli companies will not even let you up without a guide. The bottom line is that going on a ski vacation to Chamonix, you have much greater chances of getting to ski the best snow if you ski with a mountain guide. If you need to get away on a relaxing holiday without the stress of planning and organizing, a guide will be worth the money! And remember, Chamonix is different from all other ski resorts due to the amount of extreme skiers around - you can not just follow tracks (unless you have a parachute in your backpack)!
Article Source: http://www.globetrekkerarticles.com
Eva Eskilsson is a skier and climber, writing for Mountain Spirit Guides, a small guiding company based in Chamonix. They offer guided off-piste skiing and climbing in the Alps and run expeditions worldwide.
Please Rate this Article
5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5
Not yet Rated
Powered by Article Dashboard
