House of Guides

The Casa delle Guide (Maison des Guides), home of the Società Guide di Champoluc-Ayas since 15 August 1965, is a rascard dating from 1713, dismantled and transported to the centre of Champoluc, where a plot of land was purchased and a base of green stone was built to re-erect the wooden structure of the ancient rascard. The work was carried out by the guides themselves in shifts of voluntary labour, while the necessary funding was raised through donations. This was the first guides’ headquarters in the Aosta Valley to be regularly connected by radio with its mountain huts.

The figure of the mountain guide in Ayas emerged in the final decades of the 19th century, at a time when in the neighbouring valleys of Gressoney, Valtournenche, and Zermatt, guides were already in full activity — not only thanks to the early development of tourism and the frequent stays of Queen Margherita, but also owing to the Matterhorn and the story of its conquest. Mountaineering came to be regarded as “a new trade” capable of supplementing the meagre incomes of the time, which were based primarily on livestock and fieldwork.

The first Alpine guide from Ayas to be licensed by the CAI (Club Alpino Italiano) was Giuseppe Favre, known as Morich, from Antagnod, born in 1874, registered as a porter in 1899 and promoted to guide in 1902.

Among the first generation of guides were also Fosson Benjamin and Fosson Antoine of Fiere, Obert Battista Tatcha, Frachey Jean Baptiste Bernosin, Favre Joseph Envers, Favre Louis L’on pipe, and Brunod Alexis Friche, known as “the fox of Ayas.”

The clientele of the period before the First World War was an élite one, drawn from the finest names in the noble, cultural, political, and economic worlds of the time; it was common practice for guides to be engaged for the entire season, or for much of it, by a single mountaineer.

It was precisely this first generation of guides who, in the 1920s, helped bring about the birth of the first hotels and mountain tourism. The profession of guide remained both sought-after and well remunerated.

Around the 1930s, the first Società delle Guide was formed, modelled on the existing local societies of Courmayeur and Valtournenche, but it did not achieve the hoped-for success, remaining largely inactive as the guides who belonged to it continued to work independently.

It was not until the construction of new ski lifts and the substantial growth of “accessible” tourism that, in 1960, the old “Società Guide di Champoluc-Ayas” was relaunched, constituted in legal form in 1962 under the auspices of guide Toni Gobbi of Courmayeur, president of the Valdostan Guides, Ezio Zorio of Biella — who became its first president — and Luciano Beltrame of Ivrea, who became its administrative secretary.

In the years that followed, drawn also by the prestige and admiration that the Società Guide had earned for itself, a new generation of young guides joined the founding members, integrating and collaborating with the more senior ones.

Società Guide di Champoluc-Ayas, 1962
founding members, including guides and porters

Frachey Sylvain de Resé
Bieller Giuseppe Pinotin
Favre Antonio Piemetta
Frachey Ernesto, Frachey Luigi,
Frachey Biagio, Frachey Oliviero li Bernosin
Fosson Giuseppe Carrà
Colli Giorgio
Favre Umberto, Favre Augusto Manté
Dondeynaz Giuseppe Castel
Gaillard Marco Mochet
Favre Alberto Bertino
Fosson Giancarlo
Ezio Zorio, honorary guide
Luciano Beltrame, honorary guide