What Travel Insurance Do You Need for Mountain Climbing?

When it comes to travel, we all have different styles. Some like to use their vacation time to relax, others to tour new places, others to explore the world with their families, or some combination of them all. For some people, traveling is all about adventure–spending time in the great outdoors doing activities like hiking, cycling, mountaineering, and extreme sports.

The good news is, all you have to do to make sure you are covered if you’re planning on mountain climbing is to opt for Hazardous Sports Coverage, or what we in the biz refer to as a “sports rider” when you’re selecting a travel insurance plan for your trip. Here’s what you’ll get when you do:

Our fingers are crossed that this doesn’t happen, but if you sustain an injury while mountain climbing, you’ll want to make sure your travel insurance policy has medical coverage so you can get the care you need no matter where you are on your trip. Most general travel insurance policies do not cover medical expenses associated with mountain climbing or other extreme sports. With the added sports rider, though, your coverage will extend to mountain climbing (and parachuting and scuba diving…you get the picture). This way, if you do happen to get hurt while you’re on your climbing expedition, you can focus on getting medical care and not your finances.

If you end up getting hurt while mountain climbing and your injury is minor, you may be able to head to a hospital, get patched up, and head back to the trails. If your injury ends up being a little more serious or an emergency, you may want or have to head home after you get immediate care. If this happens, you don’t want to pay an arm and a leg (on top of what might have already been an expensive trip) just to travel home early from your trip. With the addition of a sports rider insurance coverage, you’ll be covered for trip interruption if you end up needing to cut the trip short. In most cases, this means you’ll be reimbursed for many of the prepaid expenses you won’t use on your trip and will be covered to switch your plane ticket home, among other things.

If at any point during your adventure, you need to leave the country because of extreme weather or political unrest, you’ll want to make sure you have evacuation coverage. The very last thing you want to be worrying about in an emergency situation is the bill you’ll have to foot to get out of it, right? This one doesn’t exclusively apply to extreme sports, but evacuation is an important piece of additional insurance coverage to have, especially when you’re going on a trip that will be spent mostly outdoors. No matter how well you plan and how much research you do, the weather can change at any minute and you’ll want to make sure you’re safe if it takes a turn for the worse.

So if your itinerary includes (or even might include!) one of these activities, we highly recommend that you add Hazardous Sports Coverage to your travel insurance policy. You can get started by checking out this information for Adventure travel and then get a free quote here.