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
Reaching Chandrion Hut, tired but happy.
Hi Whitney, enjoying seeing these places again - I skied/fell/sweated my way from Chamonix to Zermatt via some of what you have done in 1986 with Nick Shearer and friends. Cheers. Simon Middlemass
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