Since 2013
We walk three routes a year and we walk them properly. Two guides to eight walkers, tents carried, days that end when the light does. Nobody is being timed.
01
Morocco
Imlil to the Tessaout valley, over Toubkal if the snow allows and around it if it does not.
Mule-supported, which means you carry a day pack and the kitchen arrives before you do. That is the one luxury on this route and it is the reason the walking days can be long without being grim.
We sleep in the gites at Tacheddirt and Amezri, in the refuge below Toubkal, and two nights under canvas in the Tessaout. April is early: the passes hold snow, and we carry axes and spikes for the Tizi n'Ouagane whether or not we end up using them.
Toubkal, 4167 m
02
Swedish Lapland
Abisko to Nikkaluokta on foot, one pass, and a week of light that never quite goes out.
The classic northern section, walked at the speed it deserves. Flat ground for the first two days, then the Tjaktja pass, then the long descent into Salka and the birch again.
Self-carried, tents, and the huts only for resupply and the sauna at Salka. August means the mosquitoes have mostly given up and the cloudberries have not. We ford the Tjaktjajakka on foot unless the melt says otherwise, in which case we use the boat.
Tjaktja pass, 1150 m
03
Tierra del Fuego, Chile
The southernmost trek in the world, and the weather is the entire point of it.
Five days on Isla Navarino, below Puerto Williams, in country that is barely marked. There is no path in the usual sense: there are cairns, and there are the teeth of the ridge, and there is a lot of peat.
Everything is carried, including four days of food and the fuel. We plan for two weather days and we frequently use them. Paso Virginia is the crux and it is scree on the far side, steep enough that we take it one at a time.
Paso Virginia, 843 m
How we guide
We do not run a fixed itinerary and we will not pretend to. Every route in this book has at least two versions, and which one we walk is decided at breakfast, out loud, in front of everybody, with the forecast on the table.
That is not indecision. It is the only honest way to plan a week in country that has weather. A group that has been told exactly what will happen on Thursday is a group that will walk into Thursday whatever it looks like.
Eight walkers, two guides. Both guides know the route in both directions and one of them has walked it in bad conditions, which is the only qualification that counts.
We turn around. It is written into the price and it is discussed on day one. Nobody has ever asked for their money back after seeing why.
The departure book
Turned around
One stroke, one departure, kept the way the guides keep it. The eleven crossed out are the weeks we turned around. We would run all eleven again exactly the same way.
The full list runs to two pages and we send it when you book. These are the six that people get wrong.
New boots on day one is the single most common way to ruin a week. Bring the pair that has already told you where it hurts.
You will sleep in it. Buy for the coldest hour of the night, not the nicest hour of the afternoon.
The phone is a fine second opinion. It is not a first one, and it has never once been warm.
The spare battery lives in a different pocket to the torch. This is not superstition, it is just what works.
A flask of something hot at the top of a pass has settled more arguments than any speech we have ever given.
Weighs forty grams. Has saved a rucksack strap, two poles, a tent pole, and, once, a boot sole.
Three guides, and one of them is on every departure.
Abisko, Sweden
Fourteen seasons on the Kungsleden. Has opinions about stove fuel and will share them.
Swedish Mountain Leader. Wilderness First Responder, current.
Imlil, Morocco
Grew up under Toubkal, has summited it more than three hundred times, and still stops at the same spring.
Accompagnateur en Montagne. Avalanche level 2.
Puerto Williams, Chile
Reads Fuegian weather the way other people read a clock. Has turned us around twice and been right twice.
Guia de Montana AGMC. Ocean survival, current.
Written on the route, typed up later, edited as little as we can stand.
Tjaktja pass, 1150 m4 min
Four hours of grey and then, for about ninety seconds, the whole of the Tjaktjavagge opened up and shut again. Nobody had a camera out. Karin said it was the best thing she had seen all year and then put her hood back up and kept walking, which is the correct response and I have thought about it since.
Read the entryPaso Virginia, 843 m6 min
We sat out Tuesday in the tents, which is not a failure, it is the plan working. Wednesday came in cold and clear and we were on the pass by nine. The far side is 400 metres of loose rock at the angle of repose and we took it one walker at a time, which cost us two hours and no ankles.
Read the entryEnquire
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