Experience The Adventure

The Matterhorn. And twenty nine 4000m+ peaks.

I was rather impressed with the trains in Switzerland. They were quick, came often and fairly clean. Trains through the mountains are also quite scenic.

Zermatt, pop 5500. Except during tourist high season. Everything is a hotel, restaurant or store. Luckily enough, the place isn’t really that big nor does it feel that big. Yes, Switzerland is definately expensive for some things like eating out. For some others, its really not that bad.
Two whole days to spend here. Hiking is the plan. No 85$ to take the lift.

In Chamonix, chatting to people. This guy comes back with a Quebec accent. Hey, you from Canada? Yes… You a climber? Yes… Is your name Geoff? (very hesitantly) yes. Gives me the strangest look. Its because I was chatting to people in that hostel, and they mentioned the climber Geoff from Quebec.

I get into Zermatt, go to eat dinner in my hostel and chat to a brother sister duo. They ask, where did you come from? Chamonix…. Where are you from? Canada…. Whats your name? Geoff. They give me the strangest look, so I spell it for them G E O F F. Then Geoff walks in the room. Yes, we do that to confuse people.

Day 1

7am- rain
9am- rain.
11am- rain. Decide to hike to the base of Matterhorn, so I leave the city.
12pm – raining harder. Everyone is coming down. Except me. I’m going up.
1pm- rain. Nice trail, led to road. road flooded in places. Now very wet.
2pm- raining really hard. The clouds are only slighly above me. Ate lunch. Rain won’t leave. Clouds won’t either. Very cold. Decided have to turn back.
5pm- turning nice. Just got back into town. Clounds still there, so far no pictures of the Matterhorn.

Day 2

Now or never. When the sun broke the horizon, the race was on. I went down to take the train up to the Gornergrat. Here they make trains go up 45 degree slopes, by having a gear track in the middle. This was supposed to be one of the best views, or they say World Famous. The next mountain was the best view of the Matterhorn, so the plan was to hike over to the next mountain. The only trail I could find was the peak ridge. Well, I could do that then slide myself down one of the runs until i hit a trail I was looking for. Seriously though, a PEAK mountain trail, and serious amounts of snow, and a serious peak. No crampons.

I soon found out why I could not find the trails, there was so much snow almost no one walked anywhere. I carefully crossed several snow patches on the mountain, going accross an easy ski trail. The hard part hit where the trails merged into a valley. Having no idea how deep the snow was, or if it would collapse, or have crevasses, and I didn’t want to find out. Needless to say that was one hectic experience. I found a broken ski pole that helped immeasurably, and also crossed landslides and rock slides to eventually make it to the other side of the valley.

There were people wandering through the valley and in the mid section of the Rothorn Paradise chair. Near the top of the mountain, I relaxed and waited and after about an hour the clouds broke for a view of the Matterhorn. Continuing on I found one set of fresh tracks created that day somewhere closer to the top, not surprising because that lift was supposed to be open. I followed the fresh tracks for 100 meters to the next patch of snow, it took three steps into the snow on this mountain, then turned around. I laughed my head off. Near the top of a mountain that supposed to be for tourists. No tourists, no tracks, snow and I have no gear.

The top is so close. I used that broken pole as a probe, trying to find depth and predict stability. Geoff needs some official high mountain training. And equipment. Just as I summit, the lift operator whistles at me. I don’t understand whatever language he is speaking, but you can figure out its probably the last lift down of the day. I decline. Some hikers summit a few minutes later, they took the front of the mountain which turns out to vitually snow free with interesting marmots, sheep and deer.

I’m taking a vacation from hiking for a while.

Pics

I found this great postcard at Europes highest shopping mall.

I was going down and thought:
Great, this is where he took it, and took 30 photos.
walked 500m and thought Great, this is where he took it, and took 50 photos.
an hour later i had 7000 photos, and thought this must be the right place now. I think some of mine turned out better anyway.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.