It was a couple years ago when we were on our whitewater rafting trip in the Grand Canyon where we met another couple who had hiked in the Swiss
Alps and had a wonderful time - so we added the idea to our “someday vacation”
list and that was that. Then last year
the opportunity arose where we would have the time to go to the Swiss Alps (and
more) and do some hiking, so we started the research and planning to take the
trip in the late summer of 2019.
We’ve had a lot of people ask about planning the trip, so I’ll
get into some of that here. If you’re
not interested, just go to the next post to start enjoying the trip for yourself. 😊
There are many ways to enjoy a hike in the Swiss Alp – two of
the most popular routes are the Tour du Mont Blanc (TMB) and the Haute Route (HR
-which is what we did). Somehow we simply landed on the Haute Route (in hindsight,
more out of ignorance than anything else, the TMB has one hiking in three
countries and the HR is almost all in Switzerland – since we decided to hike “the
Swiss Alps,” the HR seemed more aligned with that idea) and we proceeded from
there.
There are three ways to hike the Haute Route:
- Go on a guided group tour – there are lots of companies that do this.
- Have a tour company plan the route (hotels, etc..) and give you the itinerary and you can go at your own pace with a group or guide.
- Plan it all yourself.
There are pros and cons to all options, and depending on
your personality, your pros may be someone else’s cons and vise versa. We immediately
discounted the guided group tour since we do not like hiking/eating/hoteling with
a large group of people, and seriously considered the second option, as Suzanne
(the vacation planner) was a bit intimidated figuring out the route (there are
thirteen options of hiking routes!), dealing with French and German websites,
and just all the unknown “stuff” out there when planning a trip like this.
Then
one day Suzanne was bored (yes, this is what actually happened), and she
decided to see if she could plan the trip on her own and see if the cost was
substantially less. So with some research, talking with companies, reading and
re-reading the “bible” of the Haute Route, Trekking Chamonix to Zermatt: TheClassic Walker’s Haute Route, Google Translate, and a couple online blogs, Suzanne realized
that we could create our own trip – completely independent – for about 60% of
the cost of a company organizing the trip for us. Plus, it gave us the ultimate
independence in the event we decided to change our route, or stop hiking, or
any number of things. So that’s what we
did – figured out our own route and by doing so, we decided what segments we
wanted to do, which ones we wanted to skip, and where we wanted to stay each night.
Then about a year later, we were off……………
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