Backcountry Splitboard Touring In The Alps
Why you should always have it on your splitboarding destination radar.
We love going to different destinations each winter season. Georgia, Greenland, Kyrgyzstan, Romania and Norway etc are amazing places to visit as the dual hit of immersing yourself in a new culture and riding powder in different mountains is a euphorically heavy one. Each of our worldwide sessions are special but we are always, to a degree, at the mercy of the elements on any particular trip. This is also why all of the destinations to have been carefully selected for their mix of alpine and treeline riding options so we’ll always be able to find a good plan B for the day if the conditions dictate it.
Our worldwide splitboard trips are an amazing experience so we’ll not stop going to these places any time soon as they have always delivered on every level but there is always an outside chance that we may get ‘skunked’ on the odd day. For example, in Greenland we couldn’t split on the first proper day due to an intense arctic storm that came through and it just wasn’t safe (or appealing enough) to go out. However, that did mean we got to ride fresh powder for the rest of the trip so it wasn’t all bad.
At our basecamp zone in Georgia, we’ve heard about big storms dropping 1.5 meters in the zone that required a huge amount of management throughout the night, digging and clearing to ensure the integrity of the accommodation. Also it made conditions too deep to tour in over the following couple of days, so it can happen.
We truly get why people want to come on splitboard trips with us to the more exotic destinations but the fact is we can’t always mitigate the worst of the weather if and when it comes through.
This is why splitboard touring in the Alps can be a different proposition altogether
The 2026 winter season will be our thirteenth year as a pure splitboard guiding operation (we started out in 2008 as a regular snowboard camp) and over those thirteen years we have been running UIAGM guided splitboard trips in the big mountains of France, Italy and Switzerland. Our position here in the Chablais Alps means that, 95% of the time, we can literally circumnavigate the worst of any weather that comes through.
If it’s cloudy in France at altitude we’ll search for the sun in Italy. If it’s low tide in Italy we’ll take you into Valais in Switzerland or we can hang out splitboard touring in Chamonix or Les Contamines in France, should that be the better option. All of this is possible within a 3-hour drive from our base here in the Abondance Valley.
The other major advantage that we hold is real time access to a large network of French UIAGM guides who are either in situ or have just returned from working in one of the three countries. This means we can fine tune our planning and micro-manage the weather windows available to us – it’s also why we’ll not decide on where we’re taking you until the night before we leave the valley. It ensures we can deliver the best splitboarding experience possible in this part of the Alps.
Booking with an experienced guiding company is key
We’re seeing a few other operators starting to advertise ‘powder hunts’ here in the Alps but they seem to decide on the destination the week before. If you know the mountains, a lot can change in a week in terms of the weather and this is why we’ll always remain super flexible, only making the decision of where to go at the last minute. We’re the only splitboard guiding company to offer this and it gives us the edge in that respect.
We know it can be a huge headache for our guides in working out where to go but their results can be nothing short of miraculous. For example, one time, back in 2024, when things were getting a little spicy storm-wise across the Alps, Polo found us an absolute needle in a haystack. There is a place in Saint-Barthélemy Valley in Italy that is surrounded by a natural ring of mountains that are high enough to shield it from the light of the large cities near it such as Aosta, Turin in Piedmont, and Milan in Lombardy and, crucially, from the worst of the storms. We rode powder in sunshine while the rest of the Alps was getting hammered by snow. You can read about that trip and more from 2024 here, if you like.
Finding you the best conditions in new zones.
We all know the Alps are huge and that it would take a few lifetimes to explore all of the terrain on offer here so even if you’ve been on an Alps session with us before it is highly unlikely that we’ll ever take you back to the same place twice. One of the big advantages of backcountry splitboard touring in the Alps is he wide ranging hut network that we can utilise to either chain destinations on a trip or base ourselves at just one of them for a few day’s of touring.
The Swiss Alpine Club have 150 huts under their management running through Valais to the Grisons Alps. In France you have Fédération Française des clubs alpins et de montagne (FFCAM) looking after the refuge network and in Italy nearly 400 huts fall under the management of Club Alpino Italiano (CAI)
Add to this the number of privately owned huts in the mountains and you can start to see the scope of what is on offer.
Hopefully we’ve managed to put up a case for our part of the Alps as a solid option for a splitboard touring destination. A quick recap:
- It is a huge area
- Boasts a massive hut network over 3 countries
- It’s relatively easy to get to
- Access to a UIAGM guide community that works together, sharing information
- The ability to circumnavigate bad conditions
- Micro planning can deliver the best experience
If you’re looking for a high mountain, alpine adventure then get in touch. In the meantime here are a few images from our 2025 trips.
