Alpinism & Glacier Travel

Flexibility is our working method - not a slick marketing slogan. We budget 1-2 extra days in the planning of many of our trips to factor in adverse weather conditions. The days can for example be used to move the trip a day or two as to use the best weather window for the summit bid.

Of course you only pay the actual guiding days. We'd rather achieve your goal than insist on doing a poor alternative.

Ambitious alpine goals require the right conditions and this might not be the case on your first try. We understand that you don't want to hire a guide for not climbing your cherished dream route. On our individually arranged trips we discuss and agree on how to deal with this situation prior to the trip.

Understandably we cannot cancel all our trips in the high season. But we will come up with a fair deal for both sides: a prefixed alternate date, a voucher for the next attempt, an adapted rate for smaller and less committing objectives, or the option to cut off some days.

The technical basics of alpinism such as knots, crevasse rescue, setting up a belay etc. are rather easy to learn. What takes a lot more time to acquire are experience, judgement, situational decision making as well as all the tricks of the professionals that make life in the mountains easier.
A lot of alpinists were lucky to learn from more experienced mates. Our coachings give you that unique opportunity. We act as supervisors and consultants while you are climbing on the sharp end of the rope. We try to provide you with as much expert knowledge as we can. There is no business secret, we are happy to share our decision making and perhaps even learn something ourselves.

Advanced topics include complex rope techniques (e.g. the infamous short rope), tactics, speed improvement or analytical snowpack analysis. Our coachings are well suited for experienced teams.

Quite frankly our cooperating partners want to sell the gear they are providing us with. It is therefore clearly in our interest if you test gear on our trips. So why should we charge you for this?

Lend out gear is generally free of charge on all our trips. If you have your own equipment, but want to save weight on a challenging ski traverse, we will bring lightweight crampons for you. You are keen to test a wide freeride ski or the latest ice tools? No problem! Of course, we do not have multiple sizes or models in stock, but we are trying to help you with gear as much as we can.

Environmental protection must not be misused for mere image cultivation. Businesses who earn their money with air travel should not pat themselves on the back because they use recycled paper and green electricity. This is not credible. We clearly acknowledge the undeniable environmental damage our activities cause, and we try to at least partly offset them by the following actions, without too many words:

We encourage you to travel by train. If possible we give you a lift from the train station. We help to reduce your luggage by providing you all the technical gear required for your trip. Given a sufficient number of participants, we cover up to 50% of your train ticket.

We compensate our own as well as the CO2 emissions of our clients travelling by car without any additional cost in a transparent and comprehensive way. Of course, you are also invited to contribute. Get in touch if there are any questions!

Sure, we do enjoy fine food and decent accommodation. But we are happy with less comfort as well, if that's what you want. Not having to book hotels makes things a lot more flexible. Cooking together is social and can be a lot of fun. No doubt, hiring a guide is expensive. By keeping our expenses as low as possible we help you save money and focus on the really important things - to climb and to ski! If you like the simple life, tell us so! There is a surprisingly high number of climbs that can be achieved without using expensive huts.