Ober Gabelhorn (15.08.2018)
Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Start point | Rothorn hut |
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| Characteristic | Alpine climbing |
| Duration | 12h 00min |
| Map |
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| Ascents | Ober Gabelhorn (4,063m) | 15.08.2018 |
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The weather was pretty wet on the Monday after we’d done the Gastlosen traverse, so we had ended up doing two short climbs at Bramois just outside of Sion and then going to the nearest cafe to plan the remainder of the week. Basically the weather was going to still be a little damp on Tuesday but both Wednesday and Thursday were looking good with a fairly high degree of certainty on meteoblue.com. The logical thing to do (in my mind at least) was to go to a hut where we could do two days of climbing and make the most of the good weather days, and the Rothorn hut seemed like the perfect solution since it gives access to both the Ober Gabelhorn and Zinalrothorn, two beautiful (and pointy) 4000m peaks which I have wanted to climb for much too long! The north face of the Ober Gabelhorn is a particularly striking, steep triangular snow face, and the route up from the Rothorn hut basically follows its left edge (East ridge). So anyway, John gave the hut a call to check if they had spare beds available and very soon we had made a plan which I was really looking forward to. Since the route up the Ober Gabelhorn from the Rothorn hut takes longer than the standard route up the Zinalrothorn we decided we’d climb the Ober Gabelhorn on the Wednesday since this was always supposed to be the day with better weather.
On Tuesday we did the usual drive back down the valley to Sion before heading eastwards towards Täsch, which is the last village before Zermatt where we parked up. Zermatt is vehicle-free so you either have to take the train up or get a taxi. We parked up at one of the taxi places and took the taxi up to Zermatt, where the trail up to the Rothorn hut starts from. The weather was surprisingly “friendly” for hut walking today. 12 degrees and light rain showers seemed more or less perfect for a 1600m hut walk! I had been concerned that it would be swelteringly hot like it had been on the walk-in to the Valsorey hut the previous week, but today I had nothing to complain about. The path we followed goes quite steeply up from the centre of town – it’s the same path that I’d hiked to go up the Mettelhorn a couple of years ago so I had an idea of what to expect. Anyway, we went at a very relaxed pace so we’d wouldn’t have tired legs before the next day and took a short lunch break at Trift, around halfway to the hut. It was a bit drizzly and there wasn’t much in the way of views, but it was quiet, no wind and the temperature was very comfortable. The final half of the walk offered a few glimpses of sunshine but mostly light rain and fog. As much as I do like a good long walk, I think it would be fair to say that I wasn’t disappointed to have reached the hut when we finally did arrive mid-afternoon. It was good to get the waterproof jacket off and dry out a bit. It was pretty quiet and not many people were there when we arrived, but the hut gradually filled up over the rest of the afternoon and by dinner time at 6.30pm the whole dining was pretty packed with climbers. I don’t usually pay attention to the male:female ratio, but there was a distinct lack of women staying at the hut that night. There must have been between 30-40 climbers in the dining room and I counted about 7 females……
Breakfast was to be at 3.30am the following morning and we managed to get away not too long after 4am. It was a really beautiful morning with clear sky, stars and little wind – down on the glacier at least. We had a fairly long glacier approach to get done in the dark, so it was going to be a matter of plodding at a steady pace and looking forward to a great sunrise. There were several teams that left the Rothorn hut to do the East ridge of the Ober Gabelhorn, but we ended up way ahead until we’d started climbing the ridge leading up to Wellenkuppe. I wonder if this was just a strategy to let someone else break trail in the new snow that had fallen?! There was a bit of a bitter wind blowing as we approached the end of the snow plod, but the dawn colours over the Zinalrothorn were amazing and a good reminder that warmth was soon on the way! The approach to the ridge on Wellenkuppe was short and involved a few minutes moving over steep and loose ground; the ridge should have been gained via an easy corner, but we somehow ended up on a corner too early. John eventually climbed out onto the slabby wall on the right side where the climbing was probably more around a IV rather than a III, but on the positive side the rock was more solid than the corner we should have climbed (we found it on the descent).
After the first cold pitch of climbing, we continued up the fairly obvious broad ridge. It was a mix of easy climbing and scrambling, but verglassed in places so we ended up putting the crampons back on instead of risking slipping on the ice – and the crampons stayed on for more or less the rest of the day. Now I think it’s worth saying something about the views; they were incredible! Behind us we had the big peaks such as the Dom, Täschhorn and Dufourspitze and to the left of the ridge the impressive north face of the Matterhorn came into sight as we traversed around the ridge to access the slabs leading up to the final snow slopes on the Wellenkuppe. It was a bit of a contrast to have the sun on our backs the whole way up the ridge compared to the rather chilly west-facing Meitin Ridge on the Grand Combin. Once we’d climbed the slabs we took a break on the little plateau at the start of the snow slopes and drank/ate/put on suncream. It was an easy plod to the top of Wellenkuppe from where we got our first glimpse of the superior north face of the Ober Gabelhorn. It was so steep and elegant!
The summit of the Ober Gabelhorn wasn’t actually very much higher than the Wellenkuppe, but the route is much more time consuming than it looks; now the fun stuff was about to begin. From the top of the Wellenkuppe we descended maybe about 50 metres in height to a col; the snow ridge was narrow in places and the new snow hadn’t bonded all that well to the underlying old snow, so making tracks was a delicate task and the French pair who’d overtaken us a bit earlier were now more than happy for us to go first. Being behind John made it difficult to figure out how thrilled he was about this. Maybe not so much? Anyway, for some parts of the traverse across the snow we faced in and kicked good footholds; other parts we just walked carefully. This eventually took us up to the foot of the Grand Gendarme, a fairly intimidating rock tower which was also plastered in snow. It was actually really good mixed conditions since the snow stuck well and gave the crampons something solid to bite into. What I hadn’t expected (due to having read the route description too fast) was that there was fixed ropes on the Grand Gendarme. I’m not sure whether I was glad to see them or not, but in any case I did make use of them and I guess it made the ascent and the traverse across to the other side a much more efficient affair than it otherwise could have been!
Once back on the main crest of the ridge again there was a small passage on rock with a short downclimb before we were back on the snow again and treading delicately up the crest of the ridge. And since there was no track in the new snow, John had the unenviable task of breaking trail while I followed on a short rope behind. The total height gain on the snow wasn’t really that much, but by the time we’d reached the rockier section of the ridge again I think we were both fairly glad to be on something more solid! From there followed many shorter pitches of straightforward scrambling (but still in crampons) interspersed with somewhat harder climbing up slabs which seemed to be devoid of handholds. One particular section required climbing a slab which was separated from the nearest by a bit of a gap; the right hand slab was covered with thin patches of ice while the one to its left, slightly behind, was ice free. The technique I employed was to straddle the gap between the two slabs and get as high up as I could by getting my right crampon into the thin patches of ice on the right hand slab and trying to find any kind of rocky feature to balance the two font teeth on my left crampon on, before finally traversing across to the left and getting up to the next major hand hold at the upper edge of the slab…. It was not easy and required a great deal of belief that I’d reach the handhold and not slip first! In retrospect I did wonder whether it would have been more straightforward to climb around the slabs by traversing out into the north face which looked a lot icier, but may have offered an alternative to climbing slabs in crampons.
Above this was more scrambling on mixed rock/snow, but the snow cover was thinner and it felt less secure than the conditions on the Grand Gendarme. As we progressed further we were met by increasing numbers of climbers who were now on the descent after presumably having climbed the Arbengrat from the opposite side of the mountain, so it was a bit time consuming to wait until they’d passed and sharing space at abseil points/belays was not ideal since there really was not much space at all! But now we were literally within metres of the summit ridge and all was left to do was a slightly exposed rock scramble up the right hand side of the ridge. I did this while still wearing my mitts which probably wasn’t the most ideal way of tackling the scramble, but it worked out fine and was greeted by some rather magnificent summit views of the Dent Blanche on the other side:)
The summit of the Ober Gabelhorn wasn’t exactly the most secluded spot to be in the Alps but it was most definitely an exhilarating place to be. However with the long descent in mind and the ever-growing queue of climbers coming up and over from the Arbengrat we decided not to spend too much time at the top. Just enough time to eat a snack and take some photos.
The descent involved retracing the ascent route, but we either abseiled parts of the ridge or downclimbed where the terrain was more scrambly and quicker to descend. On the first part of the descent from the summit ridge which led over to the crest of the east ridge, it was a bit overhanging but only for a couple of metres so instead of abseiling John lowered me off this bit. Unfortunately while trying to find some footholds to keep some balance and re-weighting my feet in the process I ended up doing a bit of a pendulum and swinging around the other side of the ridge. I don’t remember exactly if I ended up hitting any rocks but I did end up with a sore back. Fortunately I could still manage to move and climb back up to where I should have descended to, so I guess it wasn’t any serious injury. However, we were still more or less at the top of the mountain, so the rest of the descent was long, slow and rather painful!
In total we used about the same time to get down to the Rothorn hut as we did to get to the summit although I’m pretty sure that had I not had a sore back it probably would have been an hour or two quicker. We were in fact the first pair to reach the summit from the Rothorn hut – but probably one of the last ones back! Well, it was a relief to make it back to the hut at around 4.30pm in the nice afternoon sunshine and upon arrival a big glass of cola was consumed along with ibuprofen and chocolate, a combination I can highly recommend after any long day in the mountains, and especially after having returned from a terrific day on an equally terrific peak such as the Ober Gabelhorn. However when I got up at 3.30am the following morning I felt that my back was still too sore to climb the Zinalrothorn, so we went back to sleep and ate a ”late” breakfast at 7am before starting the 1600m descent back down to Zermatt. At least it was a nice walk and the early morning sunshine wasn’t too hot :)
Definitely an outing I’ll remember for a long time!
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