Video: Stunning, Five Day Ride Along The Haute Route

The Haute Route runs between Chamonix in France, to Zermatt in Switzerland, for 180 killometres (that’s 112 miles, or over seven million inches). It’s been around for a century and a half, and is bucket list material, as amply demonstrated by the video below, made by the mysteriously named Jonas M, Jakob N, and a third, unnamed mystery man (edit: He turned up in the comments. Hello andreoha!). There are actually two routes, this video is the “walkers” Haute Route, so called because it doesn’t require crampons, ropes, harnesses or any other climbing equipment (this route also means looking at glaciers, rather than climbing or traversing them).

The video came to us via our forum rather than newsdesk, and it really is a cut above most. It takes a little while to get going; normally a full minute of scene setting and preamble would eliminate a video from being posted here, but in this case, it’s worth the wait. There’s hike-a-bike, then there’s hike-a-bike so steep you use chains bolted to the rocks to pull yourself up with one hand. A bit of map poking and bike carrying gives way to some amazing views, well executed POV footage, and some nicely thought out drone footage. We’ve occasionally seen paid, professionally made videos that aren’t this good.

The video also has English subtitles. If you’re not familiar with YouTube’s interface, you can turn those on with the leftmost icon, shown in this screenshot:

(No video? Try this link)

If you too like to measure and consider every bit of kit you carry, they have kit nerds like you sorted out too. There’s preparation for a trip, then there’s this kitlist showing everything Jonas was carrying, down to the gram (no word on whether that’s claimed weights or measured though, for you absolute perfectionists out there). Visit the forum thread and go down a few posts to find map links to every stage of the route.