Trail Running the Glacier Haute Route: Chamonix to Zermatt, 2017
The one pause in the action during our runs for Run the Alps Switzerland was for an idea that I decided needed urgent doing.
While driving deep into the Val d’Herens for the Aiguilles Rouge run, I caught sight of the high glaciers we had previously passed over during the Chamonix to Zermatt ski Haute Route, and the hiker’s Glacier Haute Route. I realized that the Glacier Haute Route would make for an interesting run. Within minutes of this realization, I informed Kim we would be doing it in the next weeks and was on the phone to our friend Pascal Egli, a world champion Sky Runner and glaciologist, to see if he’d join.
After a frantic planning period, we set off from Chamonix as the glaciers were at the very end of their optimal condition for travel. Four days later we arrived in Zermatt with three days of running, a day of waiting out a storm, and one very, very sketchy descent on the last glacier of the tour.
Camera: Sony a6500
Posing Scale: 2 – We didn’t have much time, or room, to pose while on this route. But I would ask Pascal and Kim to wait for me to find an angle when I saw potential. This image is from the moment we finally stepped off the last crevassed glacier and it was all downhill, on dirt, to Zermatt.
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