Best Matterhorn Climbing Guides 2025

Had a beautiful, exciting, terrifying, and educational experience in the Intro to Mountaineering course and Matterhorn Peak climb. The guides were wonderful, especially James, who patiently helped me through no less than 3 legit meltdowns. I may have learned I’m too chicken to do this again, but I highly recommend IAG to anyone looking for an adventure.

If you are looking for professional training and honest skill assessment and feedback from mountain guides certified at the highest level, then this course is for you. As described on the website, we received hands on training in all aspects of winter mountaineering including terrain and avalanche condition assessment, avalanche victim location and rescue, self arrest, crevasse rescue (anchor building, rigging), back-country travel (heavy packs and snowshoes), and general winter camp set up and management. Our guide, Paul Koubek (IFMGA,IVBV,UIAGM), was professional in all respects and offered valuable, individualized feedback and skills assessment for each member of our party. The ice climbing day was a lot of fun but also involved training on safety, placement of protection, and ice climbing technique. This was not a summit trip but if the weather had cooperated (it did not) we were positioned to make an attempt on Matterhorn peak. Overall I got everything I expected from the course and more. I will definitely climb with IAG in the future.

This course was an excellent introduction to mountaineering. Our guides Dave and Ali were awesome both really nice people with a perfect balance of being conscientious, laid back, and assertive. Dave has an incredible amount of knowledge built over 30 years of climbing all over the world, Ali is earlier in her mountaineering career but also had so many useful tips tricks and techniques to teach us. We covered basic avalanche safety, navigation skills, snow shoeing, ice axe self arrest, snow shelters, camping in cold climates (it was 0 deg F when we woke up our last morning!), equipment selection, and many other skills on our way up Matterhorn peak. The gear they provided was top notch and was a really useful way to try things out before committing to big purchases. Overall the course was an excellent way for people that have done a lot of advanced hiking, climbing, and camping to test themselves in proper winter conditions. It is physical - make sure you're fit before you go! The guides are great at keeping the pace manageable for everyone but you dont want to be the one holding the group up! We didn't make it to the summit as the weather turned bad near the top but it was still really awesome and exciting. I just hope we can remember all we were taught - there's so much to learn! Would definitely recommend these guys - we'll be using them again when we're ready take our mountaineering to the next level!