Inside the Norrøna x Gore-Tex Freeride Festival in Chamonix
Chamonix holds a particular place in our lives. Tash and I spent a month in “Cham” the summer before we got married, living cheaply and falling completely in love with the place — the town, the mountains, the culture, the sense that you’re surrounded by people who have structured their entire lives around being in the hills.
We’ve passed through a handful of times since, always with that same feeling of coming back somewhere that matters. But we’d never actually snowboarded there. So when Norrøna invited us to join their annual Freeride Festival — a three-day, all-inclusive event set in the heart of Chamonix — saying yes was easy.
What Is the Norrøna x Gore-Tex Freeride Festival?
The Norrøna x Gore-Tex Freeride Festival is an annual, invite-based event that brings together around 80 skiers and snowboarders for three days of guided freeride clinics, ambassador presentations, and off-piste exploration across the Chamonix valley.
It’s organized through Norrøna Adventure and hosted at the Hotel Les Aiglons — a four-star property in the centre of town with an outdoor pool, spa, and the kind of cozy post-ski atmosphere that makes it hard to leave the lobby.
The format is simple: you arrive Thursday evening for dinner and introductions, spend Friday and Saturday in full-day clinics, and do a final half-day on Sunday before heading out.
Meals, ski passes (including the Vallée Blanche), shuttle transport, and product testing are all included. You sign up for clinics in advance and get grouped accordingly.
The clinics on offer span a solid range of disciplines and ability levels:
- Vallée Blanche — the iconic off-piste glacier descent from the Aiguille du Midi
- Steep skiing — technical terrain with Chris Davenport, anchors, abseiling into lines
- Ski touring — uphill travel, route planning, backcountry decision-making
- Girls only — off-piste freeride guided by Norrøna’s female ambassadors
- Avalanche awareness — lift-accessed terrain with rescue scenarios and risk management
- All-terrain skills, resort exploration, and backcountry freestyle
The ambassador roster is genuinely impressive — names like Amie Engebretson, Christian Nummedal, Benjamin Forthun, and Chris Davenport alongside a crew of local Chamonix guides who know this terrain the way most of us know our home resort. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the local guides were crushing it just as much as the pros.
Our Festival
Tash and I split up for much of the on-snow time, which gave us two very different perspectives on the same event. Tash signed up for the girls-only clinic, which was one of the newer additions to the program.
She came away genuinely stoked on it — the guides were fantastic, the group dynamic was tight, and being in a focused, all-women environment in Chamonix’s off-piste terrain made for some memorable laps.
The clinic attracts an intermediate-level crowd, so it’s not intimidatingly expert-heavy, but the terrain access and guiding quality punch well above what you’d get just hiring a guide independently.
I went into the backcountry freestyle clinic, which leaned heavily on terrain reading, movement efficiency, and getting comfortable. We spent time scoping out natural jumps and building kickers. What I took away more than anything was the people — the coaches, the guides, and the other riders in the group.
There’s something about being deep in the mountains with a small crew of like-minded people, learning from someone who genuinely knows the place, that you can’t replicate in any other format.
Then came the Vallée Blanche.
Vallée Blanche: Iconic, Even on a Hard Day
If you’re unfamiliar, the Vallée Blanche is one of the most famous off-piste descents in the world. You ride the Aiguille du Midi cable car to 3,842 metres, walk a narrow snow arête above a very large amount of air, and then drop onto a 20-kilometre route across the Mer de Glace glacier back down to Chamonix. On a bluebird powder day, it’s reportedly transcendent.
We didn’t get that day.
Wind in the days leading up to our descent had built a firm pack across much of the route, with breakable crust in the sections where you most wanted it to be soft. It was a technically demanding day — the kind where you’re managing edges and body position carefully rather than just pointing it and grinning.
But here’s the thing: it didn’t matter. The Vallée Blanche isn’t a run you do for the conditions. You do it for the scale of it — the glacier, the seracs, the views back up to the Aiguille du Midi needle, the strange feeling of skiing through something ancient.
Even with breakable crust underfoot and a bit of cursing on the firmer sections, it remains one of the most extraordinary places we’ve ever been on a snowboard. If you go expecting a powder day and don’t get one, adjust your expectations and take in what’s actually around you.
It’s a bucket-list descent regardless of conditions. Just know that conditions vary significantly and go in with a flexible mindset.
The Hotel, the Evenings, and the Social Side
Les Aiglons is a genuinely excellent base. The rooms are spacious, the outdoor pool is the kind of thing you appreciate after a long day of big mountain terrain, and the location in central Chamonix means you’re walking distance from everything the town offers.
The evenings followed a natural rhythm: ski hard, shower, eat well. Norrøna organizes group dinners and ambassador presentations after each day on snow, and the après-ski session at Moö bar in town was a solid anchor for the post-ski wind-down. For most meals, we were in the hotel restaurant, and we were thoroughly impressed by the food—they were ready for 80 hungry skiers and riders.
Honestly? After a few weeks of freeriding in Europe we were both exhausted. We weren’t tearing up the après scene — we were hungry, tired, and happy to sit over dinner and debrief the day. The social programming is there and well-organized; how much you lean into it is up to you.
The Norrøna møre Kit
Both Tash and I were riding in the Norrøna møre jacket and bibs throughout the festival — and came away with a clear sense of what the kit is built for.
The møre line is Norrøna’s performance touring and high-output freeride collection, built around Gore-Tex and a focus on packability and weight. This isn’t a puffy resort jacket. It’s cut for people who generate heat — tour, climbers, splitboarders, high-energy freeriders.
Across three days of varied Chamonix terrain, both of us found it performed exactly as advertised: waterproof when the weather called for it, breathable enough that we weren’t overheating on the bootpacks and approaches, and light enough to forget you’re wearing a technical shell.
The fit is athletic without being restrictive. Movement through the hips and shoulders — the places that matter when you’re riding variable terrain — is unrestricted in a way that cheaper shells often aren’t. It’s the kind of gear you stop thinking about, which is the highest compliment you can pay a technical jacket.
If you’re someone who tours, splits, or skis hard enough to work up a sweat on the uphill, the møre kit is worth serious consideration. It sits at the premium end of the market, but the Gore-Tex construction and the lightweight focus justify the price point for anyone putting it through genuine backcountry use. It’s definitely become our go-to kit for touring, and we look forward to putting it to work in the coming season.
Should You Go?
The Norrøna x Gore-Tex Freeride Festival runs annually in March, with the next edition scheduled for 2027. Registration opens periodically through Norrøna Adventure, and spots are limited to around 80 participants.
It suits intermediate-to-advanced off-piste skiers and snowboarders who want guided access to Chamonix’s terrain in a structured, high-quality setting. It’s not a beginner event — the physical and skill demands are real — but it’s also not exclusively for experts. The clinic structure means you can self-select into something appropriate for where you’re at.
What makes it worth it isn’t any single element — it’s the combination. The guiding quality is exceptional. The terrain is world-class. The gear access and testing opportunities are genuine. And Chamonix itself is one of those places that has a way of working on you — it gets under your skin whether it’s your first time or your fifth.
For us, it was the first time we got to actually ride the place we’ve loved for years. That alone made it worth every bit of the breakable crust on the Vallée Blanche.
Both Tash and Cameron rode the Norrøna møre Gore-Tex jacket and bibs throughout the festival. Gear was provided by Norrøna. All opinions are our own.
