Schreckhorn

Datum:

30.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

13:20h

Entfernung:

13,5km

© Hannah Vickers Unlike quite a few of the 4000m peaks I’ve climbed in the Alps in the last few years, the Schreckhorn has not actually stood at the top of my priority list for many years. It was really only after having heard about how awesome (and long) the Schreckhorn-Lauteraarhorn traverse was, from one of Tim’s friends who’d guided it last year, that it began to spark a bit of interest in me. I remember it having caught my eye when I did the Eiger traverse which ascends the Mittellegi ridge and descends the South ridge, but from that angle I thought it looked a bit bold for my climbing abilitiy (or lack of). Turns out the easiest route up the southwest ridge is actually “only” an AD+ with fairly easy climbing, not above III+. And having checked out various route descriptions it did sound like really nice, >>>

Grandes Jorasses

Datum:

27.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

9:48h

Entfernung:

8,3km

© Hannah Vickers Following the brilliant first week of climbing, we had two easy days down in the valley back in Evolene which I mainly used for eating, drinking and sleeping plenty while also making plans for the second week. I’d earlier hoped that the Taschhorn-Dom traverse could be an option, but after having found out from the Swiss AlpineClub website that the Mischabel bivouac hut was closed for the season, it was obvious that this idea was not realistic – at least not this summer unfortunately. Having spent the week over in the Zermatt and Saas valleys, which I felt pretty familiar with now, I thought it would be quite nice to have a change of scenery and climb some other 4000ers in other regions of the Alps I hadn’t spent much time in. I was also quite keen to climb a “cool” mountain and so >>>

Nadelgrat

Datum:

23.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

14:05h

Entfernung:

18,7km

© Hannah Vickers The northern Nadelgrat is made up of the Nadelhorn, Stecknadelhorn, Hohberghorn and Dirruhorn, the latter three which I had not yet climbed but of those three, only 2 are deemed to be principal 4000m peaks. Anyway, it was a traverse I’d had on my list to do and after numerous consultations with Martin Moran’s 4000m guidebook I had got the impression that the normal way to do it was from north to south, by ascending a couloir on the east side of the Dirrujoch between the Dirruhorn and Hohberghorn first and then continuing along the ridge southwards and descending the normal route on the Nadelhorn back to the Mischabel hut as a round trip. It turned out Tim had other ideas, which meant doing it as a one way traverse and ending up in the picturesque town of Grächen above the Zermatt valley >>>

Breithorn half traverse

Datum:

21.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

4:34h

Entfernung:

7,5km

© Hannah Vickers After arriving back in Zermatt from the Zinalrothorn , we checked the weather forecasts again to make sure it would still be good weather for the next objectives we had planned to do. Originally the plan had been to head up to the Ayas hut, then traverse both Castor and Lyskamm the following day, spend the night up at the Margherita hut and then do both Nordend and the Dufourspitze on the thursday which was supposed to have the best weather and would have made a nice 3-day outing. Castor and Dufourspitze I had climbed previously, but not Lyskamm or Nordend, so they were still on the "to-do" list. However, since the forecast for the next 2 days were looking less optimal for a big day on exposed snow ridges, we moved onto my backup plan which was to do the Breithorn half traverse, a quick half day >>>

Zinalrothorn

Datum:

20.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

7:45h

Entfernung:

7,1km

© Hannah Vickers The Zinalrothorn is a pretty cool looking peak, though I personally think its a bit dependent on which angle you see it from. Definitely awesome when viewed from the Ober Gabelhorn though :-) Like last year, I had 10 (fun) days of climbing with British mountain guide Tim Neill to look forward to and the Zinalrothorn seemed like a good option to start off with since neither of us were really well acclimatized to 4000m yet. I was a bit worried that I would have de-acclimatised after a few days of easy hiking in the Saas valley and not really going above 3300m, so it was probably good to be starting with a peak which didn’t have a massive summit day although the walk-in to the Rothorn hut was relatively long. Since I’d expected there to be reduced capacity at the alpine huts this summer, I made a booking >>>

Blanc de Moming

Datum:

14.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Hochtour

Tourlänge:

5:32h

Entfernung:

8,0km

© Hannah Vickers Blanc de Moming, another mid-3000er easily accessed from the Grand Mountet hut was decided to be the objective for our second day. Initially we had thought to have the Besso-Blanc de Moming traverse as an option, which I was more keen to do since it was more interesting, but since the weather forecast had changed a bit when we woke up, we decided to go conservative and choose the easier of the two in case we needed to make a rapid retreat. I’d had a better night’s sleep at least and we took breakfast a little later this morning, leaving the hut just before dawn. The southwest ridge of Blanc de Moming was to be our route up, and this was basically gained by following the same path up the moraine ridge behind the hut and following it up to the col we’d ended the Mammouth traverse at the >>>

Trifthorn

Datum:

13.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Hochtour

Tourlänge:

5:17h

Entfernung:

7,6km

© Hannah Vickers Summer holidays 2020 was supposed to have been spent first in Peru and then in the Alps, but since corona decided to put an end to the Peru plans, I was determined that it wouldn’t stop the yearly trip to the Alps. With the infection rates in Switzerland having dropped to pretty low levels by the end of June I decided I would travel down anyway even before the Norwegian government decided to allow travel to mainland Europe without having to quarantine on return. After having had to rebook flights several times it was a relief to actually make it into Geneva, though the journey itself was very nice. Empty airports and 25% full flights, arriving on average 15 minutes early at each airport I had to change at is not something to complain about! Initially I had planned to spend a week in the Saas >>>

Le Mammouth traverse

Datum:

13.07.2020

Tourcharakter:

Alpinklettern

Tourlänge:

2:21h

Entfernung:

3,5km

© Hannah Vickers Since it was still early in the day when we came back down to the hut from the Trifthorn and Graham didn't feel like he'd done enough work for the day (not joking!) it was suggested to make the most of the dry weather by doing the traverse of Le Mammouth right behind the hut. I was still a bit tired from not having slept in the night, but eventually let myself get persuaded into doing it. Aga was convinced she'd be holding us back since she'd not done so much scrambling/climbing so she chose to stay behind at the hut and take a nap in the afternoon. So in the end we left around midday as the clouds were starting to roll in and walked back down the path from the hut to the foot of the ridge. It was good quality, fun scrambling with a few bits of downclimbing in between. It was supposed to take >>>

Col de Torrent

Datum:

10.07.2020

Tourlänge:

4:18h

Entfernung:

21,5km

Værfløya

Datum:

08.07.2020