Nordend (24.06.2023)
Skrevet av hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Startsted | Monte Rosa hut (2928moh) |
|---|---|
| Turtype | Alpintur |
| Turlengde | 10t 10min |
| Distanse | 11,0km |
| Høydemeter | 2020m |
| GPS |
|
| Bestigninger | Nordend (4609moh) | 24.06.2023 |
|---|
Nordend is one of the 50 major 4000m summits listed in Martin Moran’s guidebook to the 4000m peaks of the Alps, despite having a prominence of less than 100m, so it was on my to-do list for this summer even though given the choice I’d rather have done a ski-assisted ascent much like I’d done on the Dufourspitze a couple of years earlier. After almost an entire week of strong gales and a storm depositing new snow up high I’d originally wanted to use the new weather window to go and climb the Kuffner Arete on Mont Maudit, but since both the Torino and Cosmiques huts were full for friday and saturday night, we ended up heading to Nordend first since there was still many availabe beds in the Monte Rosa hut, which had literally just opened for the summer season. We drove over to Zermatt at around 7.30 from Evolene, but as usual everything seems to take far more time than I expect it to take, so once we’d parked in Tasch, caught the next train to Zermatt and then the train going up to Rotenboden I think it was a little after 11am when we finally began hiking down towards the Gornergletscher from Rotenboden. Fortunately the air still felt relatively fresh and it wasn’t baking hot yet. It was also really good to have some clear air and blue skies again, earlier in the week the air had been quite thick and hazy because of Saharan dust that had been blown northwards. The previous days’ rain and colder air had cleared that away now.
We followed the “old” trail to the Monte Rosa hut, which basically descends a bit lower than the new trail, by going all the way down to the rubble at the sides of the Gornergletscher rather than crossing further up where it is still dry ice. Anyway, once we’d forged our way across the rubble, we took a lunch break and then continued across some flat(ish) ice to the start of the slopes leading up to the hut. We went a bit off-track to start with but soon hit a decent trail that took us directly up to the Monte Rosa hut. In total it took roughly 3.5 hours so we arrived while it was still early afternoon and quiet, giving us plenty of time to relax before dinner. The hut guardian Kilian was a friendly guy to chat to, although he was seemed a bit sceptical about our plan to go to Nordend since they didn’t have any reports on conditions there apart from what they knew from the end of summer 2022 – that there were some big crevasses below the Silbersattel, which is where the normal route goes up to. Tim, being ever the optimist didn’t seem overly concerned and was pretty certain the crevasses ought to be filled in given how much snow was still around, so we decided to carry on with the original plan anyway and give it a go. Despite being a friday evening, the hut wasn’t particularly busy, and we got served up a nice dinner of turkey slices in breadcrumbs, mashed potato and some vegetables. Breakfast was planned for 2.30am so most people in my dormitory were in bed by 9pm. I slept pretty well even though it was a short night and can’t recall hearing any snoring going on!
There was a good vibe at breakfast and it seemed most people were quite wide awake and chatty, and planning to head to the Dufourspitze. The majority seemed to be on a relaxed time schedule and didn’t seem in a rush to get out and leave. I think a lot of people might have had a strategy to wait for others to start first, as there was no trail after the new snowfall from the previous days, so there would almost certainly be some trailbreaking to do higher up the mountain..... we got going quite soon after 3am as we had intended to walk all the way back to Rotenboden afterwards so there wasn’t the luxury of a relaxed start. We followed a path for perhaps the first 45 minutes (I don’t remember how long) until we hit a more continuous patch of snow further up. Put on crampons and harnesses quite soon after reaching the glacier and plodded in a fairly steady pace up the gently angled Monte Rosa glacier for what felt like eternity. By the time we’d reached a slightly flatter spot above a more crevassed area it had already begun to get light and we took a break here before resuming the plodding. One or two other rope teams were nearby, but otherwise we didn’t see any of the dozen other teams who’d been staying at the hut that night. Quite soon there was a most beautiful sunrise over the Matterhorn behind us, although we didn’t stop to take too many pictures. As we approached the northwest-facing crevassed bowl between the Dufourspitze and Nordend we began to branch off from the main trail headed for the west ridge of the Dufourspitze, and quite soon we found ourselves wading through som pretty deep new snow accumulations. It’s worth mentioning at this point that in the route description in Martin Moran’s guidebook for the south ridge of Nordend he opens with “A long glacier expedition with a short ridge and scramble to finish. The climb is not recommended in soft fresh snow, especially when there are no tracks on the climb to the Silbersattel”. Too bad we hadn’t paid attention to this opening line before going to the mountain ;-) I thought it was hard enough work trying to follow behind in the deep soft tracks that Tim had made, so I can’t even begin to imagine how exhausting it was to be him making them! It somehow felt like I’d de-acclimatised after spending most of the week down in the valley, and I felt like I was breathing a lot harder at this altitude than I expected to. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to keep plodding on at a steady but slow pace and weaving our way around the crevasses, which seemed to be very well filled in with snow, so they didn’t pose much of a problem. Slowly we got closer to the ridge, but instead of going straight up to the Silbersattel which is closer to the Dufourspitze we took a kind of shortcut by heading a bit further left – and a bit further north of the col and nearer to the summit of Nordend. As the slope steepened up towards the crest of the ridge we climbed a couple of pitches as the snow here was both steeper and harder, but actually very good to front point up. Tim managed to find a couple of places to make an anchor, sometimes by placing ice screws after scraping the snow off the underlying ice, or by using some rocks close by. Eventually we were both up on the ridge, finally seeing the sun for the first time in many hours and all that remained was a relatively short walk up the ridge and a small scramble up rocks to reach the small-sized summit (big enough just for two bums to sit on). Had we gone up to the Silbersattel first I imagine it might have taken a lot longer to traverse the ridge – it was actually a lot longer than it looked on the map. After 7 hours from the hut we both collapsed on the summit, enjoyed the sunshine and kind of dreaded the long way back to Rotenboden. Given that we’d already used more than the guidebook time to get to the summit, I was a little concerned that it would end up being very late before getting back to Evolene, and we’d probably not have much time to eat properly and rest before heading up to the Cosmiques hut the following day. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we reversed the route, downclimbed the steep bit to the glacier, and then gave the Monte Rosa hut a call to find out if they could squeeze us in for another night. At least then we could use the afternoon to rest and wouldn’t have to rush to catch the train back to Zermatt and then drive another 2 hours to Evolene.
The return trip back down the glacier was pretty quick and easy in comparison to the way up, though very hot in the late morning/midday sun; we took a few breaks along the way since there was no rush and we eventually arrived back at the hut at about 1pm and chilled out in the deck chairs under the parasols :-) I later tried to catch up on a bit of sleep in the afternoon, but there was a lot more activity in the hut compared to the previous day and I couldn’t sleep. We later heard that quite a few groups had been delayed getting up to the hut because there had been some technical problems with the Gornergrat train, so there had been no trains running for 3 hours (!). After hearing that it was bit of a relief that we’d not bothered to rush back to Rotenboden as we’d have had a much later finish to an already long day! As things turned out I didn’t get much of a good night sleep at the hut either since the rest of the dormitory I was in were waking up at 2.30 and a couple of guys were pretty inconsiderate and spent a lot of time makeing a load of noise getting ready, then a new round of people got up at 5.40am.... Anyway, we left around 7.30am after breakfast and returned to Rotenboden via the new trail. The last time I’d walked this way had been in 2021 after having traversed Lyskamm and returning straight back to Zermatt; all I recall was feeling mega tired when we did it, and it was in the hot afternoon sun as well, so I didn’t have the best memories. However, it turns out that it is in fact a very pleasant walk when you don’t do it after climbing for 11 hours, and especially in the morning when it is still nice and cool :D After returning to Zermatt, we went back to Evolene to pick up extra food and an extra ice axe, then continued straight to Chamonix.....
Kommentarer