UKH

I've used snow card a few times now, but does anyone find their policy descriptions a bit confusing?

The man thing is I'm struggling to understand what the appropriate level of cover is needed to do "things" in the Alps up to 3000m?
 

To put it into context, I have in the past always used Extreme Adventure for hiking in the Alps. I am going to Garmish again nexty week to try a bit of skiing and perhaps have a walk around Zugspitze glacier and may even have a short walk from Sonnen Alpen(2600m) to Zugspitze summit (only around 400m of elevation gain) - so I have looked at the less expensive policies like "Adventure Plus".

It covers you for:

Abseiling
Bouldering
Scrambling
Single pitch and/or bolted sport climbing (inc.permanently bolted multi pitches)
Sport climbing (involving permanent fixed anchors)
Via ferrata
Trekking upto 4000m in the greater ranges (e.g. Nepal, South America)
Via ferrata
Skiing - on and off piste with or without a guide

On the face of it, it looks like I'm pretty much covered.
All these activities are things you can do at between 2000m - 3000m, particularly because the policy says you would be covered to go up to "4000m in the "grater ranges" (Nepal etc) (so why not below that in the Alps?).

The next Policy up from this is "Max Adventure" which includes more mountain sport activates, including Glacial travel. 

The thing that strikes me as unusual here is that I can't think of any significant glaciers below 3000m in the Alps, so to be covered to be on a glacier must mean that you should be able to go above 3000m by virtue of the policy wording.  

It's not until you check out the Extreme Adventure pack that their 
policy mentions (for the first time) "Alpine mountaineering" up to 5000 meters".

Does this then suggest that all the other policies wouldn't cover any activity in the Alps? 

I think Showcard needs to review these descriptions. 


 

Have you tried contacting them direct to get them to clarify?  Might be a good starting point...

FWIW, I have contacted them about a specific scenario in the past couple of years, and received a comprehensive response, so it's worth a go.

Unfortunately they don't have a number -I will have to resort to email. 

Email's a better option for this kind of query anyway, you want their response on the record in writing in case there's any question mark over it later.

You've typed out your query anyway, so won't take much to send it.  

There's plenty of glaciated terrain below 3000m in the Alps. Mer de Glace?

Adventure Plus seems to be just for rock climbing and trekking i.e. no Snow and Ice or Glaciers. But what makes it ambiguous is that it includes skiing, including Off Piste. Does that include lift-accessed off piste skiing on glaciated terrain?? I'm guessing not, but it doesn't specifically say "not on glaciers".

I think you will need the Max Adventure policy.

Yes I realised my mistake 😂

2000m considerably high though. 
 

Yer I agree the skiing part is quite ambiguous. Cervina’s ski resort is around 3900 meters if I remember, so it would be a bit misleading if you weren’t covered following an accident. 

If the policy states "Skiing - on and off piste with or without a guide" then that will be at whatever the altitude of the piste is, there is a considerable difference skiing at 3000M+ on piste as there is off piste or trekking at 3000M+

I usually default to Max Adventure as that quite clearly allows cover for what i intend doing, mainly ski touring and off piste in winter and trekking in summer (including glacial terrain) but doesn't stop me hiking to the top of a subsidiary top outside the ski area in winter.

Russell at Snowcard was very responsive and helpful chasing the glacially slow and inefficient claims management companies* when I got stuck in Italy for two weeks with Covid last year.  That was all via e-mail; I think their record of e-mail responsiveness is much better than most companies.

* The first one of which went bust because they couldn't deal with the volume of Covid-related claims in the winter sports season of 2021-2022.  Who'd have thought it?

Look at the exclusions of the policies. There is a handy table showing what is in and out per policy on the Snowcard website.

According to that, Adventure Plus does not appear to cover you for glacial travel at all - so I think that would exclude any glacial trekking in the Alps even if under 3-4000m.

https://www.snowcard.co.uk/activities-covered