I'm writing this trip up in 2011 having found my diary notes tucked away on a shelf so the normal laser like accuracy might be adrift. Mind you the upside is that it may also introduce some much needed brevity into my thoughts although I reserve the right to fall back on sheer exaggeration to spice things up. The Haute route connects Chamonix to Zermatt over the Alps. During the winter this is a classic ski touring route but during the summer one must rely on more muscle power to get through. There's several section of glaciers to walk on and snow slopes aplenty but in theory little in the way of graded climbs. This does of course rely on you sticking to the route but more about that later... For a change our plan actually allowed for a number of spare days at the end so we shouldn't have been in the normal rush to finish to make the flight home. In reality the pressure to make the flight was just replaced by the pressure that the sooner we finished the more time we would have for other routes, including the big M (Matterhorn which had bucked us off a few years ago) if we were feeling good.
Since I can't recall there's not much to comment on the preparation for this trip, but given that nothing unusual sticks in my mind it is safe to assume that there was the normal blend of last hour planning, last minute packing, last second sorting out of group kit, last millisecond of rushing to the airport etc. If you take the view that people are generally more efficient when the pressure is on then we run very lean indeed. Right, on with the story...