Haute Route E-Bike Tour from Chamonix to Zermatt: Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn in 8 Days

Your Haute Route starts in Chamonix, the birthplace of mountaineering, beneath the glaciers of the Mont Blanc massif. In 1786, Jacques Balmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard stood on the summit of Mont Blanc for the first time; a few decades later, climbers set off from this very valley to link Chamonix and Zermatt, and the Haute Route was born.

We meet in the late afternoon. Your guide sets up your e-bike with you (suspension, tyre pressure, batteries) and walks you through the week: the stages, the pace and how to manage your motor assistance. Your luggage goes into the Exo'bus, which will carry it from hotel to hotel all the way to Zermatt.

First dinner together as the Aiguilles turn pink at sunset. This arrival day matters: you start stage one rested, dialled in and free of travel stress.

First stage, first thrills. We leave the Chamonix valley on Alpine tracks and playful singletrack, with the Mont Blanc massif as a backdrop: hanging glaciers and granite spires all around.

Then comes the border, crossed by bike. On the Swiss side the scenery shifts: timber chalets, high pastures stacked above the Rhône valley, and vineyard slopes announcing the Valais, Switzerland's largest wine region.

The day ends in Verbier, one of Europe's great mountain bike and e-MTB destinations, and our everyday playground: here, your guide rides at home. Dinner, recovery and a well-earned first night in the Swiss Alps.

Wake up in Verbier facing the Grand Combin. We climb above the resort to link some of the best trails in the area. Our guides ride them all season long, so they know which ones are running best that day, and which way to ride them.

Then we leave the resort buzz behind for wilder terrain. Old mayens, raccards and hay barns tell the story of Verbier before skiing, when life followed the rhythm of the herds. Above all, we follow the bisses: irrigation channels cut into the mountainside since the Middle Ages to carry glacier water to the meadows. Today they make some of the most beautiful balcony trails in the Alps.

We finish in Nendaz, across the valley, the capital of the bisses. Shower, legs up and a drink facing the mountains: the week is under way.

The biggest climbing day of the week, and one of the most beautiful. A long, steady ascent takes us up to the ridge between Nendaz and Val d'Hérens. On an e-MTB the gradient is still serious, but the assist leaves you enough energy to look up and take it all in.

At the top, the world tips over: behind you, central Valais and its resorts; ahead, Val d'Hérens running up towards the high glaciers. An airy ridge traverse follows, then a long singletrack snaking through pine forest to the valley floor.

Val d'Hérens is one of the last strongholds of traditional Valais: wooden villages, working mountain farms and the famous Hérens cattle, small, black and feisty, whose "queen fights" mark every spring and autumn. Tonight's hotel has real Alpine character. This is usually where riders realise they are no longer doing day rides: they are crossing the Alps.

The queen stage. After breakfast we tackle the long climb to Col de Torrent, above 2,900 m, the historic gateway between Val d'Hérens and Val d'Anniviers. Larches give way to pasture, then to rock. At this altitude, the great 4,000 m peaks of the Valais feel close enough to touch.

It is a demanding climb, with a few short hike-a-bike sections: this is high mountain terrain. Without assistance, stacking this pass on top of three big days would be reserved for a handful of athletes. On an e-bike, it becomes the highlight of the whole trip.

Then the reward: a long, varied descent to the turquoise waters of Lac de Moiry, before dropping into Grimentz, with its sun-blackened larch chalets and granaries on stilts. Val d'Anniviers lived apart from the world for centuries, and it shows.

Tonight: a historic hotel full of character. After a day like this, a good bed and a proper dinner beat any luxury.

Check your brake pads: the day opens with one of the biggest descents of the traverse, more than 1,800 m of downhill in one go, from the pastures of Anniviers to the Rhône valley.

Then we cross into the Upper Valais, and into another language: at the language border, French gives way to German. Villages change names, not character: the same sun-scorched timber, the same granaries on stilts, the same pastures clinging to the slope. The riding mixes flowing sections, singletrack through larch forest and a few punchier climbs.

A final climb takes us above Bürchen to a mountain lodge at around 2,000 m. Quiet, space, and the peaks of the Upper Valais straight ahead. A cold beer on the terrace, sunset over the 4,000 m summits: hard to imagine a better penultimate evening.

The final stage. We leave the alp on forest trails and head into the Zermatt valley, where the mountains close in and the landscape turns ever more rocky. The Matterhorn plays hard to get: hidden behind the valley's shoulders, it only shows itself at the last moment.

Climbs, panoramic traverses and playful singletrack follow one another, until the moment everyone has been waiting for: around a bend, the pyramid appears. 4,478 m of rock and ice, one of the most photographed mountains on Earth, first climbed in 1865 by Edward Whymper's party, an ascent that became legend as much for its triumph as for the tragedy on the way down.

Your goal is gentler: to ride into Zermatt on your bike. Six stages, 275 km, 12,900 m of climbing: park the bike and look back at how far you have come since Mont Blanc. Spa, celebration dinner, and the Matterhorn glowing red at sunset.

Coffee on a terrace facing the Matterhorn, or one last ride? In Zermatt, it is hard to resist. Depending on the group's energy and the weather, your guide offers a morning ride on the trails around the village, with the pyramid as a permanent backdrop.

Take time to stroll through old Zermatt too: its larch granaries on stilts recall the farming village it was before mountaineering, and then the railway in 1891, made it a world destination.

Zermatt is car-free, so we ride down to Täsch, where the Exo'bus is waiting with the luggage for the transfer back to Martigny, then Chamonix. Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn, France to the Upper Valais, glaciers to vineyards: the Haute Route is yours.