Gross Fiescherhorn (17.05.2022)
Geschrieben von hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Startpunkt | Konkordia hut (2.867m) |
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| Tourcharakter | Randonnée/Telemark |
| Tourlänge | 10h 31min |
| Entfernung | 16,4km |
| Höhenmeter | 1.745m |
| GPS |
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| Besteigungen | Gross Fiescherhorn (4.049m) | 17.05.2022 |
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Ever since last summer’s little foray into the Bernese Oberland, enjoying some superb days on the Gross Grünhorn & Grunegghorn and Finsteraarhorn, I had been very keen to go back and ascend some of the other 4000ers using skis for the approach and a plan was made with Graham (mountain guide I've climbed with previously) and Rachel to do this in May this year. I was in some doubts over whether there was much point in bringing skis at all after hearing how poor the winter in the Alps had been this year, but Graham assured me the week before that it would be definitely be worth bringing them. Fortunately for us too, the weather forecast didn’t look too bad at all and after some debating over whether to start from Grindelwald or Fiesch, we eventually opted for the shorter drive to Fiesch which was also much less expensive since we would only need to pay for the short gondola ride up to Fiescheralp, much like we’d done last summer. Moreover, we’d heard that it would be possible to ski up the Aletschgletscher, even though the first 6 km or so would be hiking on the path, through the tunnel under the Tälligrat to Märjelensee. We made a pretty early 5am start from Evolene since we needed to get the lift at 7.15 from Fiesch (there were only 2 departures per day during this period). By the time we’d packed skis and boots onto our packs (loaded with with 5 days worth of lunches and snacks) our rucksacks were feeling pretty heavy. Especially mine since I had the biggest skis and heaviest boots ;-)
Anyway, we walked at a pretty gentle pace toward the tunnel and were at one point passed by two other skiers who told us it would be possible to ski down to the Aletschglatecher from the other side of the tunnel, which was good news. I had kind of envisaged that we’d ski straight down to the glacier and then get skins on straight away to skin straight up to the Konkordia hut where we planned to spend the first two nights. As things turned out there was just enough snow to ski down to the glacier, bu teven from a distance we could see that the part of the glacier where we joined from Märjelensee was completely dry, icy and not covered in snow at all. It was pretty much like we’d left it last summer! Neverthless we pole-pushed our way across and slid down to meet the glacier. There was about 15-20 minutes walking in crampons with skis on our packs until we reached the «snowline» at about 2500m. From there it was an easy skin – mostly flat up to the foot of the ladders leading up to the hut about 150m above the Aletschgletscher. It was only lunchtime by the time we arrived and not many people were at the hut yet, so we enjoyed a quiet afternoon in the dining room watching a mix of rain and sleet fall outside. It was good to have got in before the wet weather arrived!
Originally we’d planned on doing one of the lower summits such as Trugberg or Kranzberg the following day, and then going up the Gross Fiescherhorn on our way up to the Monchjoch hut bu tafter giving it some consideration it seemed like a better idea to go to the Gross Fiescherhorn first since we’d be able to leave stuff we didn’t need for the day behind at the Konkordia hut instead of taking everything with us up to the next hut. We planned to eat breakfast at 3am the following morning since it would take some time to get up to the summit approaching from the Ewigschneefeld on the southwest side of the mountain and we wanted to ski down when the snow was good and not soggy! Meteoswiss promised clear skies from around midnight onwards, so hopefully there would also be a decent refreeze after the afternoon/evening rain. I didn’t really get a good night’s sleep at all but put it down to the fact that it was my first night sleeping at altitude, which usually always turns out to be poor. Still surprising though as I thought I would at least be a little acclimatised after having spent some time at over 3600m climbing in Chamonix the previous week. Anyway, after much faffing at the hut we eventually got going just before 4am, and about 15 minutes later were down on the glacier where we switched to ski boots and put glacier gear on (both Rachel and I had walked down in trail shoes). It was a beautifully clear and mild morning and the snow had completely frozen solid. Personally I don’t really like skinning on frozen hard snow, but on the plus-side at least the conditions would be pretty good for skiing once it thawed out later in the day. Going up the lower part of the Ewigschneefeld we kept close to the eastern side.
There were actually two options for ascending this part – either going up a kind of gully formation close to the rock, or going up a slightly less steep but more crevassed slope closer to the icefall. We somehow missed the entrance to the gully in the dark and went up closer to the crevasses, which mean we at some point had to take off skis and crampon up for part of it as the surface was far too crevassed, icy and uneven to do with skis on. Once we’d got up this part the terrain flattened out a lot and we carried on skinning for what seemed like an eternity, passing by the Grunegghorn and Gross Grunhorn and eventually reaching the glacier leading up to the Fieschersattel. By this point I realised I was having a bit of a bad day and feeling super tired (I blame the hut serving spaghetti bolognese for dinner the night before – I absolutely cannot bring myself to eat it!) and carried on zig zagging up the glacier behind Graham and Rachel in a snails pace. Helpfully the snow wasn’t too icy and a tiny layer of new snow made it a little less uncomfortable to walk up with the ski crampons on. The view behind us toward the Aletschhorn was pretty impressive though, and was a nice consolation for what felt like a massive physical effort. There was a quite visible bergshrund at the start of where the slope leading up to the Fieschersattel became much steeper. We parked the skis here and switched from skis and poles to boot crampons and ice axe to climb up to the Fieschersattel. The snow wasn’t very helpful here and we all sunk in quite a bit, despite the fact that Graham was walking in old tracks (I struggled to see them). After trudging up for about 20 minutes(ish) we reached some icier snow and climbed two short pitches up to the Fieschersattel, finally emerging into sunlight after spending far too long in the shade. Now we got a whole new view over toward the east, looking directly at the Schreckhorn and Lauteraarhorn, a view I never got bored of!
From the Fieschersattel the summit of the Gross Fiescherhorn was only 100m above us, and all that separated us was a nice little ridge, half of which was climbed on rock and about half on snow. It was a pity to have to scramble up all the rock sections in a pair of ski boots with crampons on though! Very awkward… It was pleasant scrambling though and about halfway along the ridge we made a short downclimb to the right side of a tower, then traversed around to the left side of the ridge again to get back on easy snowy ground leading up to the summit. Even though the terrain was fairly straightforward, there was a lot of panting going on (mainly from me and Rachel who were clearly not very well acclimatised) but eventually we all got there and did high fives. It was a perfect summit day with no wind, lots of sun and only a bit of high cloud in the sky. The views everywhere were terrific – and much like the summit views we’d had from the top of the Gross Grunhorn last summer. 360 degrees of Bernese Oberland surrounded us – lots of aesthetic peaks separated by lots of big wide and long glaciers. A pair of climbers behind us on the ridge was useful for photo objectives!
After some 10 or 15 minutes with photo taking and admiring views we reversed our steps back down the snow-covered ridge, and descending down to the east just before the tower. The idea was to downclimb to the snow below to make things faster than downclimbing the entire ridge, but in the end I’m not convinced the shortcut saved us much time to be honest….. There was some tricky climbing over what we discovered was basically slabs covered in soft snow (not helpful) and by the time we actually did get down to the snow it was so soft that we were wading through it to get back to the Fieschersattel. In retrospect it would have been just as slow to scramble back down the ridge in our ski boots and crampons…. Anyway, from the Fieschersattel we continued the downclimbing over the ice until we reached the trail Graham had made earlier from the bergschrund where we’d left our skis. The snow here was also unhelpfully soft, so I was starting to wonder whether the skiing conditions would be any good or just too slushy. We had a decent break back at the skis, taking off crampons and jackets and putting on suncream now that it was around midday and the sun was roasting! After having skied over a bit of old avalanche debris initially, the rest of the skiing was like dream conditions. The snow had thawed out perfectly to produce some of the best spring skiing snow I’ve skied in a long time, and the ski back down to the Aletschgletscher went by very easily and too quickly. This was definitely the way to get down 4000m peaks - it made all the skinning up the hard snow worth it! For the last 500m or so back to the start of the stairs below the Konkordia hut we put skins back on to save a load of pole pushing on slushy snow. There wasn’t much hurry anyway now we were back down and quite a lot of other people were also on their way back too. The final climb back up the stairs was a bit of torture, but I plodded up in my own pace after changing back into trail shoes at the bottom. We spent the rest of the afternoon drying stuff outside in the sun on the benches and then hiding from the sun by having some drink and food in the dining room!
| Startzeitpunkt | 17.05.2022 03:55 (UTC+01:00 SZ) |
| Endzeitpunkt | 17.05.2022 14:26 (UTC+01:00 SZ) |
| Gesamtzeit | 10h 31min |
| Zeit in Bewegung | 9h 04min |
| Pausenzeit | 1h 26min |
| Gesamtschnitt | 2,1km/h |
| Bewegungsschnitt | 2,4km/h |
| Entfernung | 21,9km |
| Höhenmeter | 2.407m |
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