Locations
Ski mountaineering as a sport is particularly popular in the European Alps, where people will commonly do a hut-to-hut tour through the mountains, often crossing difficult passes where mountaineering techniques are required. Day trips from valley bases to make ascents and descents of peaks are also popular.
Ski mountaineering is also popular in other European ranges, such as the Tatra, the Pyrenees, the Southern Carpathians the Troll Peninsula in northern Iceland, and ranges in Norway. The sport is popular to a lesser extent in New Zealand and the Andes of South America.
Numerous mountain ranges in the United States offer ski-mountaineering opportunities. Popular options include the Sierra Nevada, Wasatch, Tetons, and White Mountains of New England, the American birthplace of the sport at Mount Washington's Tuckerman Ravine.
North American Pacific Rim volcanoes such as Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta, and Lassen Peak also draw numbers, along with Mexican giants Pico de Orizaba, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. Canada has numerous wild, remote mountains appropriate to ski mountaineering.
Expeditionary ski mountaineering necessary to reach the base of climbing routes takes place in such places as the Andes, Alaska, Himalayas and Greenland.
Read more about this topic: Ski Mountaineer