The gap in your credit card's travel insurance that a trek walks straight into

The travel insurance attached to a credit card is usually trip insurance, not medical insurance. It is built to refund a cancelled holiday, a delayed bag and a late flight. The bill that a trek can actually produce — a helicopter off a mountain and a flight home on a stretcher — is the part card cover rarely touches, and where it does exist it often stops at an altitude below the pass you are walking over. You can settle this in about ten minutes with the benefit guide and a phone call, and this is what to look for.

What card cover is actually for

Card benefits are designed around the trip, not the body. The protections that come with a travel credit card typically pay out when the trip goes wrong: a cancellation for a covered reason, a delay past a set number of hours, delayed or lost baggage, and damage to a rental car. Those are real and useful, and on a trek they cover the parts before and after the walking — the missed connection, the bag that arrives two days late in Kathmandu.

What they are not built for is a medical event in a remote place. Emergency medical treatment abroad and medical evacuation are the expensive items, and they are usually either absent from card cover or capped at a figure that does not survive a real incident. That is the gap, and it is the whole reason a separate policy exists.

The three lines to find in your benefit guide

Open the benefit guide, not the marketing page, and search for three things. The guide is the legal document; the webpage is an advertisement.

1. “Hazardous activities” or “adventure sports” exclusion. This is where trekking is usually dealt with. Find out whether trekking is excluded outright, allowed as an incidental activity, or allowed up to a stated height.
2. The altitude figure. If there is a ceiling, compare it with the highest point you will sleep at and walk over — not the average of your trek. Poon Hill tops out at 3,210m, Annapurna Base Camp at 4,130m, Everest Base Camp at 5,364m with Kala Patthar at 5,545m, and the Thorong La at 5,416m.
3. “Emergency evacuation and transportation”. Check it exists, check the limit, and check whether it needs pre-authorisation from an assistance company — because at 4,800m with a sick client, nobody is negotiating with a call centre before the helicopter comes.

What the bill looks like if it goes wrong

In Nepal, the numbers are big enough that a gap in cover changes lives, not holidays. From our own rescue coordination: a helicopter evacuation from the Khumbu typically runs $4,000–6,000, from the Annapurna region $3,000–5,000, hospital admission in Kathmandu $500–3,000 a day, and a medical repatriation flight home $15,000–60,000. A worst case with all three runs past $80,000. Our guide to what a helicopter rescue in Nepal costs breaks it down scenario by scenario.

Two operational facts change the calculation. Helicopters in Nepal fly from dawn until roughly 11am and rarely above 6,000m, so evacuation is a morning option, not an on-demand one. And the decision that keeps people alive is descending early, not being rescued well.

How to check yours in ten minutes

Call the number on the back of the card and ask three questions, then get the answer in writing.

• “Does this card’s travel cover include emergency medical treatment and medical evacuation abroad, or only trip cancellation, delay and baggage?”
• “Is trekking on foot to 5,400 metres excluded as a hazardous activity, and is there an altitude limit?”
• “Does the cover apply if the international flights were booked with points rather than on this card?”

Ask them to email the relevant clause. If the answer is that medical and evacuation are not included, that is not a reason to change cards; it is a reason to buy a policy that does cover it, and to keep the card benefits for the delay and baggage side, where they are genuinely useful. The two are complementary, and claiming on both for different parts of the same incident is normal.

What we ask of our own clients

We require insurance that covers the altitude of the trek you booked, helicopter evacuation and repatriation, with a 24-hour emergency number. We do not sell insurance, we take no commission from any insurer, and we will not tell you which brand to buy: the right policy depends on your residency, your age and your trek’s maximum altitude, and those three things move the answer more than any ranking does.

What we will do is tell you the number your policy has to clear. Send us your itinerary and we will confirm the highest sleeping altitude and the highest point on foot, so you can hold a policy against a figure instead of a feeling. Our Nepal travel insurance guide sets out the rest, and there are country versions for Americans and Australians.

Keep reading