Ski Touring Haute Route
First successfully completed in 1911, The Haute Route ski tour is likely the most famous and coveted ski tour in the world. Using high mountain huts to allow skiers to stay high and cover substantial distances, it winds through the highest, most dramatic peaks of the Alps from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn. It requires good weather, favourable snow conditions and strong effort to complete this line. Because of this, roughly half of the skiers who begin the tour do not complete it.
There are many variations of the HLR (High Level Route) that work their way between Chamonix and Zermatt, including those listed below. It is also possible to add ascents of a number of excellent ski peaks to any of the routes. The winter Haute Route deviates from the summer route to avoid terrain that is dangerous or impassible when snow covered.
Many people will also ski the Haute Route in the opposite direction, by variations that select better ascent and descents.
On 2 May 2008 Lionel Bonnel and Stéphane Brosse, members of the Fédération française des clubs alpins et de montagne, set the record in 21 hours and 11 minutes.
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Famous quotes containing the words ski, haute and/or route:
“The goal for all blind skiers is more freedom. You don’t have to see where you’re going, as long as you go. In skiing, you ski with your legs and not with your eyes. In life, you experience things with your mind and your body. And if you’re lacking one of the five senses, you adapt.”
—Lorita Bertraun, Blind American skier. As quoted in WomenSports magazine, p. 29 (January 1976)
“Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space—out of time.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)