Hiking the Haute Route with my dad
Spending quality time together on a 100-mile holiday through the Swiss Alps
A few months ago I published a series of posts on solo adventures, talking all about why I love them and staying safe. Sometimes it’s nice to have some company though and, on those occasions, my most frequent adventure partner is probably my dad, Dave.
There are a few reasons I like going for long walks and runs with my dad. A big one is that I don’t have to worry too much about being polite, which really takes the pressure off during the low ebbs you inevitably experience on these kind of trips. Then there’s the fact he’s about 100 times more organised than me, meaning he generally does all the pre-trip admin and I just show up at the start with my hiking poles ready to go. Perhaps most importantly though, he’s always keen to stop for coffee and cake at every opportunity and he’s pretty good at buying you a beer at the end of the day.
He has some annoying traits too (as I’m sure I do) but I we don’t need to go into those right now.
I try not to take for granted having shared hobbies with my dad (and my mum too, you just won’t hear her in this piece because she, probably fairly, refuses to come on a holiday that involves rewearing dirty socks or sleeping in dorms). Sometimes I hear friends talk about arranging to see their parents as though it’s a bit of a chore and I know I’m lucky that a) mine are both nice people, and b) I genuinely like hanging out with them. It’s much easy to fulfil your familial duties when you can do it up a mountain.
Dave and I try and do at least one trip together each year, normally choosing a route from one of the many currently unused guidebooks that sit on his shelf. We’re planning our 2023 adventure at the moment, which got me reminiscing about last year’s hike across the Swiss Alps via the Haute route.
The Walker’s Haute Route is a roughly 137 mile (221km) trail that takes you from Chamonix in France through to Zermatt in Switzerland, crossing 11 mountain passes along the way. There are lots of different variations you can take which alter the distance, plus some high-level options allowing you to summit peaks or cross glaciers. The latter require specialist mountaineering skills and equipment which I most certainly do not possess but in the spring and summer you can safely tackle the walker’s route wearing your trainers, without needing any crampons or ropes.
Most guidebooks and organised trips seem to divide the route into 10 to 14 stages but you can take as much or as little time over it as you like. This is one of my favourite things about long-distance trails and it makes them much more accessible than you might think. Some people will race through the whole trail in one go on skis while others enjoy a more relaxed schedule, like the group we met who’d been tackling it in sections for the last 12 years. (Dad particularly liked those guys because they shouted “let the youngster pass” when he overtook them.)
We generally land somewhere in the middle. Dad can’t take more than a week off work over the summer (he’s a gardener and that’s when the plants grow, apparently) so we normally end up doubling up some stages to condense the schedule. For the Haute Route, we also decided to save some time by skipping the first three stages as they follow the same trail as the Tour du Mont Blanc which we’d already done together in 2018. I was worried this was cheating, to which Dad kept repeating what would prove to be his favourite line of the trip: this is meant to be a holiday.
This left us with around 100 miles and 12,000 metres elevation gain left to cover. We flew into Geneva and then took a train to Sembrancher, where we started our trek. You can pay extra for baggage transfer along the route but being both a bit tight and unphased by wearing the same t-shirt for four days on the trot, we opted to carry our own kit. We were going for the ‘fast and light’ approach in order to be able to cover those double stage days without too much back ache. At least we were meant to be. Unfortunately, packing light is not always Dave’s forte. I say that thinking back to the two-week cycling trip where he brought an entire pannier full of maps and books with him…
He promised me that he’d leave the guidebook at home this time and just copy a few useful pages. It was while sorting through our kit after checking into our guesthouse in Sembrancher that I realised he very much hadn’t left the guidebook behind. Cue our first disagreement of the trip - and then a week of smugness from Dave every time I asked to look at it. I will admit it was *quite* useful.
Our first hiccup came when we failed to realise that the supermarket would be closed on a Sunday and we had to stock up on snacks from a sort of petrol-station-cum-gift-shop instead. We eventually started walking after stuffing our packs with overpriced sandwiches and some very dry biscuits, meandering along the valley floor for a gentle first few miles. Things soon stopped being remotely gentle when we reached Le Chable and began our first ascent, which involved essentially climbing Snowdon twice in one go.
At the top of the climb was Cabane du Mont Fort, the mountain refuge where we were sleeping that night. It was mid-afternoon when we arrived and with the sun still high in the sky, we found a table on the terrace, ordered two blonde beers and cheers-ed to a successful first day. I couldn’t really imagine a better way to spend a Sunday which was funny, really, because if you’d asked me ten years earlier I’d have said that walking uphill for four hours straight while sweating profusely from your face sounded pretty horrendous. I guess things change.