UKH

The missus and I are undertaking our first alpine climbing adventures this summer. She's doing Gran Paradiso and I'm (possibly stupidly) signed up for the Matterhorn - both guided trips.

Where's good to go for travel insurance for such things? We usually get it through our bank account, which covers our more usual foreign jaunts of (piste) skiing, mountain biking on marked tracks etc, but it doesn't cover high(ish) altitude stuff. We're not BMC members...

Thank y'all!

BL

Some options are:

Snowcard. Worked out about the same cost as BMC last time I looked.

Dogtag. Not sure how it compares at the moment.

Join the BMC and get theirs. They seem to have issues from time to time with actually selling insurance. I've had to claim from BMC for rescue and repatriation before. Would have some criticisms of the company they used to do the repatriation, they got the job done fairly painlessly but hadn't actually properly organised for a hospital to receive me in the UK, so had to be admitted via A&E. Apparently it's not uncommon. I didn't kick up a fuss at the time (was more concerned about whether I'd get full use of a pretty mangled knee back) so I guess I can't really complain too much. I still mostly use BMC.

Austrian Alpine Club is a popular option but only covers rescue I think. You'd need some other cover for medical and repatriation.

Whatever you go for make sure you check T&Cs properly.

AAC does cover repatriation.  They seem to have a new rule which insists you call Europ assistance before you arrive at hospital otherwise the cover is capped at 750 euros.  2 of my friends have been caught by this, this winter.  

We used to use Dogtag until the horror stories started appearing online in connection with the company being bought up by some bloke who had a history of running these sorts of businesses into the ground.

We sometimes use either Snowcard or BMC insurance after joining. BMC membership often gets you into the alpine huts at discount.

I seem to recall one issue with Dogtag was if you read the smallprint it didn't actually cover that much and the company refused to clarify. This was a few years ago and I don't know if anything has changed.

Ah thanks for the correction. Should have probably checked before spouting rubbish.

I’ve always taken out BMC insurance. Claimed on it twice myself and a friend has claimed on it too. They were professional and handled the claim efficiently. One of the occasions I claimed involved a helicopter off the Matterhorn, and they paid for that directly. Air Zermatt were quite happy seeing my BMC insurance certificate and I didn’t need to pay myself and claim back.