Very good documentary about the Haute Route Fiasco.

English subtitles available.

https://youtu.be/zBbtfX16UFE



Unbelievable. Mountain guide Was an absolute moron. As speculated on the German forum back then.

What intrigues me is that nobody questionend the decision making process before they got up to the Serpentine. Weather Was a lot worse than expected and was supposed to get worse. Why do you go up to a flat glacier into a beginning white out without being able to return? Are people that comfortable with a guide? Or because other groups have gone right before them?(Steve house)

I never hire guides so maybe my decision making process is different, but I'd never have gone up the Steep icy point of no return. Especially not with that forecast... but I'm a whiny freerider and no alpinist.so I don't know.

Edit: Props to Steve house for being properly prepared because he knows how quickly things can go wrong. I had forgotten he was there too.

That was a crazy documentary. A bit upsetting to watch seeing how the clients blindly follow the guide - even the guides wife was reported as saying something like “he’s a mountain guide so you have to trust him”

I’m a jong with limited experience but the guides I’ve had behave differently than this guy did in so many ways (prepardness, group size, communication style etc etc)

Thank you for posting this. Watched this in small, painful spurts to try and gain knowledge despite the sinking feeling throughout the entirety of this.

Question for those experienced in tours such as this:

-What would be your normal water/food/emergency loadout on such a tour as this? I was confused initially watching how nobody was drinking or eating, then had the thought perhaps folks travel super light on these hut to huts - is that true?

- I feel like the absolute lack of visibility @ Serpentine would be a huge flag to me, even with my lack of experience. Having skied above treelines and in fog, and even in terrain that I thought I knew like the back of my hand - I have been blown away by how quickly wrong my directional hunches were. Are tours like this sort of fueled by people just wanting to "complete the itinerary"?