Haute Route 2013 - Day 6

The final day, Phewww!  With nearly a week of good weather under our belt it was time for one last summit and then down to Zermat and home to a hot shower.  The plan for the day was to ski to the  summit of Cima di Jazzi, and then ski down the Findelgletscher which is right below Spitxi Flue and Pfulwe and the Rimpfishwang.  I will never give anyone a hard time for mispronouncing Maori words again.

The Mont Rosa Hut is in the centre of the photo and Cima di Jazzi is the small peak on the summit ridge in the centre.

For the first time clouds were gathering as we worked our way up the glacier

I had been wondering how we were to skirt a rock ridge that was in the way but it became obvious that this was just another "point of interest".  Fixed ropes made the climb easier but rock climbing with skis on packs was attention getting for all concerned.

With the cloud lowering on the glacier it was decided to head for the valley.  It was a short day but after   5 days of sun no one was in the mood to push things in the fog.

Coming down into the trees above Zermat.  Getting down is not as easy at it would seem.  It is a long long way to the valley floor.

Back down to earth

 The Haute Route is a one of a kind experience. Pretty quickly you realize while skiing is the focus, it is really just a way to experience new places, people and customs.  It is the everyday things that become new and wonderful. For example as soon as we got to a new hut people would sit around a table and share meat.  Everyone would have a large piece of prized dried meat and with their favourite sharp knife they would shave off thin pieces to share around.  There was beef, ham, horse, prosciutto, pork, salami, pepperoni and anything else you can imagine in a vegetarian horror movie.   Combined with a cold beer it was the perfect cap to a days touring.  Everyday is non stop exposure to new ways of looking at the everyday and the things that make life worth living.

Thanks to the other guides:

Jean-Vincent Lang

Jean-Maurice Fournier

Baptiste Fournier

Xavier Founier

and the nice folks of Nandez who made this such a very special trip

Haute Route 2013 - Day 5

Sunrise looking across at the Matterhorn. What could be better....well... breakfast was a bigger affair than usual with cold meats instead if the usual muesli and bread....but...if I had one bit of culture to pass on to Switzerland it would be sausage, baked beans, tomatoes, bacon, mushrooms, hash browns, toast and eggs all piled into a great heap and covered in tomato sauce.   No wonder the Europeans are all hurrying around, they are all hungry!

The day started with a quick ski up the Breithorn.  This is the easiest of the 4000m peaks but is a notable achievement for the group and you guessed it, the hugging and kissing was going off!  This time it was extreme hugging and kissing since it was you fall you die!

From we were to descent the Schwarsztor or Black Door. Like the Vallee Blanche in Chamonix this is the local classic for off piste runs.  The run goes over a convex roll for 500m before breaking up into an icefall .  It is easy to forget that you are not on a controlled ski area and if you down one of the many crevasses about all that will result is that some Swiss official will shake his head and say  "Scheiße geschieht"

Like all good things, eventually the run ended and it was back to our real jobs....walking up hill.  The route wound through an ice fall and it was sometimes dodgy with skiers coming down the same track.  You knew that it was unlikely there was a crevasse on the track and stepping off the track brought the possibility of an unwanted crevasse.  Skiers coming down also knew this making for an interesting game of nerves when deciding who would jump out of the way first.

Now you will have to pardon me here since I am going off topic. The goal of today was to reach the relatively new Mont Rosa Hut. The Swiss really out did themselves with this hut. Designed to be energy efficient (requiring over 3000 helicopter flights but let's not be churlish) this building amazes you with every change of view, inside and out. It looked odd as we approached it but I had no idea what I was in for.

View from the deck with the sun going down behind the Matterhorn.  Just another day ski touring in Europe!

Haute Route 2013 - Day 4

sorry to miss a couple days but computer access can be difficult living in huts.  Beer and wine is plentiful but internet not.  back to the story...

This was to be the day we made it to Zermat so it was gong to be a big day.  We started  skiing at 5:30am and by the time the sun came up we were just reaching our biggest obstacle of the day, the Col du Brule.  This was the first of two passes we had to negotiate that day and was the only one that we would need to walk up on foot with crampons.  This pass is not too bad and we may have been able to skin up it but it was hard frozen.

The pass lead us onto the glacier with the unlikely name of the Haute Glacier de Tsa de Tsan.  This long traverse was just another beautiful traverse until we reached the Col de Valpelline.  

  

The Col de Valpelline is the head of the glacier that feeds into Zermat.  And as everyone knows Zermat is the home of the Matterhorn...as you approach the Col de Valpelline the Matterhorn grows until it totally dominates everything around it.

As usual for notable points along the trip there was copious handshaking, hugging and kissing!!!  In fact on a sunny spring day Col de Valpelline is pretty much a non stop celebration of people arriving at the high point of their trip.

This is the start of a ski run that starts at 3500m and ends at 1800m.  But it is not so bad because you have to stop so often to look at the view.

Like any good ski run this one ends at a pub.  Furi is a small village above Zermat and is the traditional end of most Haute Route trips.  But Jean Maurice was not finished yet.  The group loaded into the Tram to Klein Matterhorn.

The Klein Matterhorn is the highest cable car in Europe at 3880m.  The tram rises to the top of the peak in the photo.  Very impressive!

A short run down from the top of tram and we came to the hut for that night.  This is another Italian hut and at 3480m I would take it easier on the great wine they have next time.  Sleeps 25 and as the sign says "dogs welcome"

Haute Route 2013 - Day 3

The days were starting to follow a pattern: heading out at first light while the temperatures were below freezing;  touring for as long as possible while the temperatures were pleasant; then slogging it out for the last couple hours in temperatures way too hot for skiing. We would get to the next hut around 2pm. This left a long afternoon for sun bathing, beer drinking and cheese eating while soaking up the phenomenal mountain scenery.

At "only" 2400m Chanrian Hut is actually quite low and is totally surrounded by towering peaks.  At first glance it seemed like a difficult place to ski out of.   But following the drainage below the hut lead to a narrow canyon.  This is exactly the type of land form that you would be a fool to enter in New Zealand but on the Haute Route things always seem to work out.  The narrow walls of the canyon corkscrewed along with ice walls looming overhead.

Suddenly the canyon opened out onto the toe of an enormous glacier.  The glacier was smooth and slowly rising and disappeared into the distance.  Baptist had a look of dismay when he muttered the mysterious word " Otemma".  As I was to soon learn this was the name of the glacier we were ascending.  To the other guides dismay it is the longest and flattest glacier of La Crete principal des Alpes (Principal Ridge of the Alps) and they find a drudge.  It was like someone had ironed the Tasman Glacier into a smooth carpet of snow, no moraine, no white ice.  Unlike my mates I found this to be one of the most pleasurable parts of the whole trip. The temperatures were cool, the snow was perfect and the terrain just melted away behind us as we made fast progress up the glacier.  I quiety thought that if these guys did a bash up the moraine to Gardner Hut the Otemma would look a lot different to them.  This was ski touring as it should always be.

Eventually we took our exit from the main trunk of the glacier and approached a high pass under a couple of beautiful peaks.  The highest peak was L'Eveque (The Bishop) and the pass that it hovers over had some of the best snow of the whole trip.

Dropping over the pass we entered Italy and could see Nacamuli Hut on the ridge below us.  This hut is one of several in the area and is used less that some others making it attractive for a large group such as ours. It was an unusual treat to ski down to the hut rather than climb up to it.

I learned that the Italians had a different view on waste disposal and the reason the toilet was located so far below the hut was evident as soon as I opened the door. I will spare you the photo.

 At dinner that night the place mats had a map of the huts in the Aosta Valley.  There are over 50 huts listed - this is just one valley!    The people of this area have an amazing relationship with the mountains (despite mediaeval toilets)

Haute Route 2013 - Day 2

Waking up at 5 am might not seem like like something to get excited about but this was going to be a big day.  Yeah sure there was a huge mountain to get over but more importantly this was the first time anyone was ever going to make me breakfast while I was working.  20 years of being the one to make the tea was all behind me now as I woke to bread, jam and hot drinks laid out for me.  Sure it was not the big Kiwi breakfast that I was used to but this was just fine, no dishes, no food to pack, not even a sleeping bag.  On top of it all it appeared that we were moving into the first period of fine weather they had forecast for ages, the day was beautiful.

We started out on our skis but after a half hour the going was too steep and we changed mode to carrying our skis and wearing crampons.  There are many ways of approaching the problem of getting a big group up a dangerous slope like this and I was keen to see how the Swiss guides would approach it.  We roped up into four groups and headed up.  Some times it is the simplest things that work the best.  By making sure that a few groups were ahead of us we were assured of good footsteps being plugged into the hard surface for us.  The other thing that they did was to go slow.  People tend to want to rush things and get sloppy with their foot work but by stopping with every foot step, people were forced into a steady snails pace.

It got steeper

And steeper.  Jean Vincent lowered a knotted rope over the final ridge cornice which was a grateful gripped by the tense clients.  

Finally we broke out into brilliant sunshine on the Plateau Du Couloir.  I have adjusted somewhat now but this was the first time reaching a notable milestone with a bunch of Swiss and I was somewhat taken back by the spontaneous outbreak of kissing that happened.  It is three kisses for each woman and a hearty hand shake for each man, not a small undertaking with a group as large as ours.  This was a pattern that was to continue for the trip, every time we reached a high point it was as if Switzerland had just been awarded the Winter Olympics.  

Once the hugging and kissing died down we stopped to admire the view.  Similar to NZ where you can look across glaciated peaks disappearing in to the distance, the view here was gorgeous.  The one difference I noted was that instead of the mountains dropping precipitously down to low elevations between summits, here it was as if The Maker had filled things in a little better.  Passes slid gently down to glaciers and glaciers tapered off slowly with easy slopes rising to the next pass.  Bouncing around between 2500m and 3600m it was if there was a very high passage all the way to Zermatt, if only they could come up with a name for it!  We could clearly see the Matterhorn in the distance, our destination in three days time.  It was every bit as impressive as the peak in Disney World it was named after.

Finally, after climbing 2000m from the start of the trip it was time to get some downhill skiing in.  The snow was pretty hard with the thaw that would provide great spring skiing still about 2 hours away but I could not have cared less. I was in a wild new world and I was loving it.

The route passed over the Col du Sonadon (the narrow col on the right) and continued down the Mont Durand Glacier, a ski run of over 1500m

We stopped for lunch........

Reaching Chandrion Hut, tired but happy.