You will meet your guide and the rest of the group at the Chamonix Experience office the previous evening to discuss the plan for the upcoming week.

We will take you for a warm-up ski tour, which is an opportunity for your guide to check everyone’s skiing and ski touring ability. You will polish your ski touring skills and learn some useful tips. You will also practice a simulated search for an avalanche victim using your transceiver, shovel and probe.

This will be a day of skiing steep couloirs such as the Pas de Chèvre, the Couloir des Poubelles or the Rectiligne couloir, and we will decide where to go depending on the snow conditions. You will practice steep skiing and jump turns, and we will teach you how to set up belays, how to abseil, how to secure your partner using a short rope and various other useful techniques.

We will take a lift up to the top of Aiguille du Midi and ski down Chamonix’s famous glacier run, the Vallée Blanche, to the Mer de Glace. Here we start the climb up to the magnificent Brèche Puiseux. You will skin and climb up a steep couloir using crampons and an ice axe. There is a short technical section and an abseil on the other side of the couloir. The descent is fun and it will bring you back to the Mer de Glace, an ideal venue for crevasse rescue practice.

You should be feeling confident skiing in any mountain terrain by now, so it’s time to go for a 2 day ski tour adventure! You will start by skiing from the Grands Montets top station down to the Glacier d’Argentière. After traversing the glacier, we skin up to the Refuge d’Argentiere, where we can enjoy the beautiful sunset and spend the night.

Today we have an early start. Using your newly acquired skills, you will skin and climb to the summit of the Aiguille d’Argentière. This is a long hike which should take about 3 – 4 hours, but all your hard work will be rewarded by a long descent of 2670 metres. The day and the course will finish in one of Chamonix’s bars with a well-deserved drink! Course ends with a debriefing in the Chamonix Experience office on Friday evening.

If you need help to find a place to stay in Chamonix, don’t hesitate to let us know! We work with a network of excellent chalets, hotels, gites and B&Bs offering Chamonix accommodation to suit all tastes and all budgets.

We highly recommend that you book any equipment with us at least 2 weeks in advance as the hire shops can have limited availability in the busy season.

You can collect your equipment the evening before the start of the course and return it in the evening at the end of your course. We work with the following Chamonix ski hire and mountain shop:

• Concept Pro Shop which is conveniently located directly next door from our office. Open 7/7 08:00-19:00

We don’t include mountain rescue insurance in any of our courses but we strongly recommend that you have it. Mountain rescue may be very expensive, particularly if helicopters are involved. Check with your travel insurance provider if you are covered for the specific activity you are going to do with us.

However, we can organise the mountain rescue insurance for you. Details of the insurance cover are different for EU and non-EU residents; please contact us for more information.