I had planned to head up the Lagginhorn for acclimatisation quite far in advance, and so booked a place in the Weissmies hut before I'd even left Norway. It was quite lucky then that I'd struck a nice weather window this week. Had a nice relaxing walk up to the hut on the wednesday, and was welcomed by the hut guardian Roberto just as I arrived and for some reason he already seemed to know who I was. When I asked how, he replied that I was the only person booked to stay at the hut that night - a bit of a novelty! As the day went on, another group of 3 (one guide and two Swiss guests) turned up, so I wasn't eating dinner alone that evening, but I did get an entire empty dormitory for myself ;-) Had a great night's sleep until 4am the following morning, then had a relaxed breakfast. The other team left about 4.30am, but I wasn't ready to leave until another 15 minutes later. The great thing about going up mountains alone is being able to do things in my own pace, and not having to rush to get ready according to someone else's schedule is bliss.....
I had already done a small recce the day before and found that the snow cover went all the way down to the end of the moraine ridge path, so it was only 25 minutes from the hut before I needed to put crampons on. From there it was an easy hike up beautifully refrozen snow more or less all the way up the west ridge. There was an existing track but I didn't use it as it went straight up the ridge and I preferred to walk in zig zags to give my quads a break. I passed team Switzerland quite early on while they were having a break so got some nice pictures of them at places along the ridge. It took roughly 1.5 hours to do the first 400m up to a flatter point on the ridge, then I took a break to put a softshell jacket on and have something to eat and drink before continuing. From there the route continued over a little more mixed ground, mostly in a snowy track but with some rock here and there. Took another short break before embarking on the slightly steeper final 400m of the ridge to the summit. The lovely refrozen track which I'd used up til that point soon disappeared under some new snow that had been transported in by the wind, so it ended up being a bit of work to make new tracks in places, although the upper part of the ridge was slightly better scoured where it was steeper, so it was quite easy to just front point up this bit. The other team had been quite close behind until then, but I noticed that they'd turned back not long after my final break so it seemed like I would have the entire Lagginhorn for myself. Not sure how often that happens :D
After 4.5 hours of plodding, front pointing and some trail breaking I reached the summit cross to be greeted by some magnificent views in every direction. The wind was bitter though and I had to have all 4 jackets on just to stop myself from shivering! Took some necessary summit selfies and then started to make my way back down the ridge again. The descent was super efficient in comparison to the ascent, and took not much more than 2 hours. I actually met 4 more people on their way up (presumably who'd taken the first lift from Saas Grund) when I was roughly halfway down so I didn't quite have the entire mountain for myself, but it felt quite special to have made the first tracks in the new snow up to the summit that morning! I spent a second night at the hut to get a bit better acclimatised and headed back down to Saas Grund the day after, after having had breakfast at a more civilized time of day ;-)
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