Lagginhorn South Ridge (07.08.2017)
Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Start point | Hohsaas |
|---|---|
| Endpoint | Kreuzboden lift |
| Characteristic | Alpine trip |
| Duration | 7h 30min |
| Map |
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| Ascents | Lagginhorn (4,010m) | 07.08.2017 |
|---|---|---|
| Visits of other PBEs | Hohsaas (3,170m) | 07.08.2017 |
First route of a two-week trip with Linda who I’d met up with a few days earlier and our Finnish guide Sami who was working for Frost Guiding based in Evolene. The weather forecast wasn’t all that promising for the majority of the week but Monday was supposed to be fairly good with sunny weather. After some discussions about what we’d already done and what sort of routes we wanted to do, we decided to start with the south ridge of the Lagginhorn, a long AD ridge route which was now in good, dry condition after several days of warm and sunny weather. It seemed like a good objective since Linda had done a lot of fairly hard rock climbing in the US but never done any short-roping before on easier grade routes in the Alps. We planned to drive over to Saas Grund on Sunday morning and take the lift up to the Hohsaas station in order to do the route the following day. Although I would have preferred to have done a longer walk up to the hut on Sunday it was in retrospect quite nice to start the week with something straightforward and not particularly physically demanding since I was a bit concerned about my left knee which had given me some hassle a few weeks ago and I was unsure about how it was going to react to lots of scrambling/climbing and steep descents. I’d taped it up anyway and hoped for the best.
Since there was zero walking to get to the Hohsaas hut from the lift (or maybe 50m walking) Sunday afternoon turned out to be quite long, but the cloud cover started to gradually lift over the course of the afternoon and I went out for a short half-hour walk behind the hut to check out the next day’s route. In the evening the sky finally became cloud-free and we got to see a great sunset over the very dry-looking Weissmies while enjoying a good dinner. Half board at the hut costs 75 SFr for the one night, but both the dormitories and washroom were relatively new and clean, plus the dinner and breakfast were also excellent so it was worth the money I think!
We planned to eat breakfast at 4am and aim to leave by 4.45am. I unfortunately didn’t sleep for 90% of the night, presumably since it was the first night sleeping at over 3100m. Surprisingly I wasn’t feeling overly lethargic when the alarm went off at 3.45am, which was a bit of a relief. I suspect it was the two remarkably good mugs of coffee I drunk at breakfast which did the trick to keep me awake :) We left the hut on time, or at least when we’d been aiming to get going. To access the Lagginjoch, where the south ridge starts, we first had to get onto the glacier which we accessed by following the path up the ridge behind the hut. For most of the way there was a vague track just under the crest of the ridge; where this ended we hit snow and put on crampons. Due to the ever-receding glacier and the very dry conditions generally in the Alps at the moment most of the snow we walked on was bullet-hard, sometimes barely covering rock slabs which we had to descend in order to get into the middle of the glacier, which required some delicate downclimbing and solid crampon work in order not to accidentally slip! After some time the steepness eased off and we trudged up the rest of the way to the Lagginjoch mostly on wetter/softer snow. By the time we had got up onto the col the sun had just risen and we saw a wonderful sunrise on the east side of the Lagginjoch.
From here the ridge was bone dry and both ice axe and crampons were put away for the rest of the day. The start of the ridge was easy scrambling and we made fairly good progress, moving together for much of the time or doing short pitches where the scrambling was more exposed or steeper. The best rock was unsurprisingly on the crest of the ridge and looser on either side, but not unpleasantly loose. There was one downclimb and 2 points which required an abseil, but otherwise it was a very straightforward and pleasantly long ridge with scrambling and easy climbing and a great view over the north side of the Weissmies behind us! On the other side of the Saas valley we could also see other big peaks such as the Taschhorn and Dom, Weisshorn etc. I’d not felt the altitude too much along the way, but the last 100m in height felt somewhat heavy-going. All in all we’d made good time and reached the summit after 5 hours from the hut, just behind one other pair of climbers who’d set off before us. We had a good break here and enjoyed the fine sunny morning while the summit was still relatively quiet.
The majority of people seemed to be on the way up the west ridge which we used on the descent. This was mostly a steep walk rather than anything particularly challenging, so it provided a quick descent back down to the Weissmies hut. Only a short part of the descent went across glaciated terrain to the south of the ridge, where we had to rope up again and there was some exposure to potential rockfall here as well so it was best not to hang around. Once we were off the ice there was a good path which led us all the way back down to the Weissmies hut where we took a 15-minute break to refill our water bottles before continuing to the lift at Kreuzboden (ca. 2400m). My toes were feeling a bit sore when we arrived at the lift so I was actually quite glad we didn’t have to bother walking the rest of the way down, especially since it was really hot by this point :)
User comments
fint!
Written by kobbenes 01.09.2017 12:17kjem det fleire rapportar frå årets alpetur?
Re: fint!
Written by hmsv1 01.09.2017 20:44ja, det kommer flere rapporter når jeg får tid til å skrive noe!