Lyskamm traverse

Date:

02.07.2021

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

11:28h

Distance:

26.7km

© Hannah Vickers I first came to know about the traverse of Lyskamm during a trip to the Alps in July 2003. The original itinerary for the week had been to climb Castor, Pollux, Lyskamm and the Dufourspitze via the Margherita hut and Zumsteinspitze. In the end the traverse of Lyskamm never happened because the guide I was then climbing with decided it was too windy that day, and we ended up ascending Il Naso (the Nose of Lyskamm) and Vincent Pyramid instead. In hindsight I don’t think I had sufficient alpine mountaineering experience to do the traverse, which is basically a 2km narrow and exposed snow ridge so it was perhaps just a well that we didn’t do it that day. However, since then it has been high on my wishlist of routes to do in the Alps but for some reason or another there has never been the right >>>

Castor

Date:

01.07.2021

Characteristic:

Alpine trip

Duration:

4:07h

Distance:

11.7km

© Hannah Vickers Did a short ascent of Castor en route to the Quintino Sella hut, with the main plan being to traverse Lyskamm the next day. Didn't get fully fog-free views from the top, but still nice to re-visit this peak again after 18 years since my first time!

Breithorn x 3

Date:

25.06.2021

Characteristic:

Hike

Duration:

4:34h

Distance:

11.6km

© Hannah Vickers Siste dag med akklimatisering i Zermatt. Kokvarmt på fjellet i dag!

Breithorn x 2

Date:

23.06.2021

© Hannah Vickers Tenkte det hadde vært lurt å utnytte det dyre heisbillettet og godværsvinduet og gå to runder på Breithorn ;-)

Hohtälli og Gornergrat

Date:

22.06.2021

Hörnli hut

Date:

21.06.2021

Nadelgrat

Date:

23.07.2020

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

14:05h

Distance:

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

Date:

21.07.2020

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

4:34h

Distance:

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

Date:

20.07.2020

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

7:45h

Distance:

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 >>>

Weisshorn

Date:

25.07.2019

Characteristic:

Alpine climbing

Duration:

9:54h

Distance:

8.2km

© Hannah Vickers The Weisshorn has been on my list of peaks I’ve wanted to climb for a while, mainly because it’s big, requires a bit of effort to reach and beautiful. It stands out from its neighbouring peaks and is hard to miss from any angle. And to quote the late Martin Moran in his 4000m peaks guidebook, “The lofty pyramid of the Weisshorn is considered to be the finest of all the Alpine peaks by many connoisseurs who disdain the public glories of the Matterhorn and who ignore the greater quality and variety of climbs on Mont Blanc”. I guess this is not too bad a description of my attitude… Anyway, with a reputation such as this it would be hard to not want to climb it at some point :) Due to the weather forecast for Friday having been changed to somewhat less stable weather, it seemed like the >>>