'The craft beer of skiing'? Introducing the most hipster way to enjoy the mountains

Downhill is my thing. I’m built for it – momentum is my friend. I am just not a ski touring person. I’ve often seen tourers, on a spring day, walking up the side of a piste – whippet-thin, Lycra-clad, with facial expressions that look somehow grim and smug at the same time, making us lazy lift-users look bad – and I’ve known that ski touring is not for me. And they are usually headed to communal dorms atop a mountain. With my snoring, I would not be a welcome addition.

In recent years, however, ski touring has been gaining hipster status – the unfiltered craft ale of skiing. You hear stories from normal people of rewarding days touring, away from crowded pistes. Mainstream equipment manufacturers have been making boots and skis, which, though lightweight, perform well when pointing downhill, as opposed to the glorified cross-country kit of old. What’s more, rental shops have started stocking them. And it’s easier than ever to hire a mountain guide to take you touring. As a result, I recently took a tentative step into the world of ski touring on a day tour.

I was with a group of skiers staying in Champagny en Vanoise in France, linked to the mega-resort of La Plagne. I already knew it to be an underrated area for lift-served off-piste skiing but the Vanoise National Park, where there are no lifts, adds another dimension. Continuing into Italy, where it becomes the Gran Paradiso, the combined 1,250km sq makes it the largest national park in the Alps.

The terrain ranges from pine forests, gently sloping pastures and river valleys, to dramatic rocky mountainsides, glaciers and huge peaks, such as the Grande Casse, at 3,855m. It is home to bearded vultures and golden eagles, ptarmigan and black grouse, ibex and chamois, lynx and even wolves. Whether you’re in La Plagne, Les Arcs, Tignes, Val d’Isère or Les Trois Vallées, everyone tells you that you’re close to, bordering, overlooking the Vanoise… I wanted to explore it.

The first stop was to pick up some specialist kit, so we headed to the Intersport shop in Plagne Bellecôte – one of La Plagne’s 11 separate villages – run by the Regnier-Lafforgues, a family robust with skiing pedigree. Mother Ingrid was the 1970 slalom World Champion, sons Cédric and Julien are an Olympic moguls finalist and a freerider plus shaper for Black Crows skis respectively.

Rental shops have come a long way from the battered independents with seasons-old gear and bored assistants hurrying you out of the door in ill-suited, badly fitting boots and skis because they want to hit the slopes themselves. The buying power of big franchise chains such as Intersport means that they stock high-quality new and niche equipment.

So I left with top-end, ski-touring specific kit, including lightweight Dynafit boots and ultra-light Rossignol Seek 7 skis, fitted with touring bindings that let you lift your heel to help slide your feet and skis forwards on the ups. I was also provided with skins – adhesive ski-length strips of fabric that you stick to the bottom of your skis to stop them sliding when ascending – together with an avalanche rescue pack containing a transceiver, shovel and probe.

The second step was to book a mountain guide. A bit of googling and a couple of phone calls brought us 67-year-old André Bianchini. I gained confidence from the adage of “there are old mountain guides and bold mountain guides, but no old, bold mountain guides”. Reassuringly he was used to inexperienced tourers: “Over the last 10 years, more and more people want to try ski touring,” he said. “The people I guide who are beginners at ski touring are usually good skiers and fairly fit [this part said with a skeptical glance at my midriff]. The skills of skinning are not very technical and easy to learn.”

On our first day, we climbed to over 3,300m to the peak of Bellecôte, which may sound impressive until I mention that most of the ascent was on La Plagne’s chairlifts. However, we weren’t riding up to tackle the off-piste descents of the north face (the Canadiens or Cairn couloirs) that are accessed by the Traversée chair before, well, a traverse across the shoulder of Bellecôte.

Instead, we joined a couple of dozen people boot-packing up the steep stretch above the Glacier de la Chiaupe chair. But as they rushed off to the right, straight down the Cul du Nant towards Champagny, we skied along the ridge, dropped down and attached our skins. André offered some practical tips on technique and then said, “If you get a good walking rhythm going, ski touring is easy – you can sleepwalk. On big tours, you don’t sleep much in the refuges, so you need to rest your mind while you walk!”

I didn’t quite achieve the intended mental calm on the way up, but the true solitude at the top of the Dôme des Pichères, after a walk of just half an hour (well, 45 minutes for the fat lad at the back), made the views all the more enriching.

Over one side was the sheer drop down to Nancroix on the valley floor; over the other, endless waves of white stretched far off into the Vanoise. After a snack – essential ski-touring kit – we set off to enjoy those extra turns we’d earned, only to realise quickly that the pristine spring snow had a week-old crust, turning us into wobbling Weebles.

As we rejoined the Cul du Nant route, we found patches of corn snow, where the sun had softened it, but more often than not it was incredibly hard work – particularly in one couloir above the Refuge de Plaisance, completely in shadow, where the surface was churned up but utterly solid.

It brought to mind something another mountain guide, Zermatt-based Scot Brian Farquharson, once said to me: “The difference between freeride skiers and ski mountaineers, is that, for freeriders, if the descent isn’t perfect, the whole day’s ruined, whereas ski mountaineers just love being in the mountains and enjoy the walk up. If that’s the cake for you and a good ski is just the icing on top, then you’ll never be disappointed.” And, despite the screaming of my legs and lungs, I was loving this… until one of my companions had a fall and ruptured an ACL.

André dealt with it swiftly and 10 minutes later the victim was in a helicopter, and back in the hotel on crutches that evening. But it was a harsh reminder that, while ski touring is more easily accessible than ever, it is an extreme activity, as was quickly crossing potential avalanche paths as the late afternoon sun set off slides. After several hours, we reached the end.

Except it wasn’t. To reach Champagny, we had to skate along a walking path. But meeting evening strollers who wondered where we’d come from made my chest puff a little with pride as I pointed back at what looked like an unnavigable mountain. I pondered over the sense of achievement in reaching a summit you’re aiming for; the chance of seeing a black grouse crash out of the snow nearby or a bearded vulture circling overhead (yeah, ok mate, I’m resting, not dead); the small changes the light makes to a peak because you have time to watch it change over hours.

I rested the next day, doing a bit of piste skiing and walking a friend’s dog, to allow my fitter companions a more challenging tour. But I started planning for Sunday stroll in the park – a 9km-long walk, with 550m of vertical, from Pralognan la Vanoise to the Refuge du Roc de la Pêche. Maybe, just maybe, I might be a ski-touring person after all.

Need to know

Intersport offers touring skis, bindings, skins, poles and boots from €10 per day. A seven-night stay at the three-star Hotel Ancolie in Champagny en Vanoise costs from €637 half-board. Luxury transfers between Geneva Airport and Tarentaise resorts from €70 each way with CoolBus or upgrade to a Tesla for €495 for up to four passengers with Zeat.Vip. Guide André Bianchini (email: andre.bianchini@orange.fr) offers a day’s guiding for five people for €400.