OLLY ALLEN
MY TOP FIVE
Mountain Tracks’ lead guide Olly Allen and his wife Julia Tregaskis-Allen, also a qualified mountain leader, pick their favourite summer hikes
1 Haute Route, France and Switzerland This is a classic you can do in winter or summer. I did it first on skis with friends in the early 1990s. Thankfully, the huts have improved massively since then – most have indoor loos and running water. My favourite is the Vignettes Hut, perched on a cliff face. For summer walkers, although a lot of the stages are across glaciers they aren’t especially steep. You have to be roped up but it’s literally just walking – no climbing or scrambling. The biggest problem is blisters. One guest of mine had such bad ones he bought some Crocs in Arolla – bright pink ones – and walked all the way up to the Bertol Hut in them.
2 Tour del Gran Paradiso, Italy This is a glacial trek with amazing huts – my favourite, the Benevolo, is on this route – and the guardiani are all real characters. Again, it’s not too difficult, with no glacial terrain until the last couple of days when you do the Gran Paradiso summit. You get four days of warm-up and two big days at the end where you need crampons and ice axes. People sometimes get scared on the last day because there’s a narrow, rocky and exposed ridge to the summit. But it’s short, 15 minutes, and there are bolts, so everyone clips in. It’s probably one of the safest parts of the week.
Trekking between Rifugios Bezzi and Benevolo during the Tour del Gran Paradiso, passing the glacial Lac de Goletta
3 Taghia Gorge, Morocco I did a route recently here that was fun – it’s not climbing, but instead rocky scrambling over really, really exposed traverses. They’re only about a foot wide, and built by
the local Berbers, so they can get around cliffs with their herds of goats. They drive either wooden or steel rods into the cliff face, and then just balance wood and flat bits of stone on them. It’s like a budget Via Ferrata, but with a 1,000ft drop next to you and nothing proper to clip into.
I went with a group of hard-core, world-class climbers
and even they were being really careful traversing these walkways. The locals were just in flip-flops, with a herd
of goats and a bag on their back – it was pretty wild.
4 Serra de Tramuntana, Mallorca While Olly concentrates on high-mountain stuff, my focus at Tracks & Trails is trail-running and hiking. I love this route because you start and finish on the coast, but in between you’re in high mountains. The highest point is 1,365m, and the terrain is alpine – they have snow in winter; in fact, you see the old ‘ice houses’ which locals used to pack snow into to make ice. They used it to preserve food, and it was almost as expensive as gold. The whole route runs through a Unesco World Heritage Site.
5 The Four Tops, Scotland I qualified as a mountain leader at Glenmore Lodge National Outdoor Training Centre, and some of those early days exploring the munros are still among my favourites. The aim of the Four Tops is to climb the highest points in Cairngorm National Park – all over 4,000ft – within 24 hours. It’s tough, just shy of a marathon at 22 miles, and despite the name there are actually five peaks: Ben Macdhui (1,309m) Braeriach (1,296m), Cairn Toul (1,293m), Cairngorm (1,245m) and SgÒr an Lochain Uaine (1,258m).
Olly & Julia factfile
Olly first stepped on skis… at the tender age of 10. “It was a school trip in Andalo, Italy.”
He qualified as an IFMGA Guide… in 2003.
He’s a stuntman too… Olly’s been roped in (literally) to doing stunts for films, including Touching the Void.
Julia… started as a triathlete but fell in love with the Highlands. “I come from Essex, which is totally flat.”
She’s a top runner… Julia has finished third in the Everest Marathon and fifth in the gruelling Chamonix Courmayeur Champex race
To find out more, see Mountain Tracks and tracks and trails
