Jungfrau (06.07.2022)
Written by hmsv1 (Hannah Vickers)
| Start point | Monchjochhutte (215m) |
|---|---|
| Endpoint | Jungfraujoch (3,469m) |
| Characteristic | Alpine trip |
| Duration | 6h 54min |
| Distance | 9.6km |
| Vertical meters | 1,250m |
| GPS |
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| Ascents | Jungfrau (4,158m) | 06.07.2022 |
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After Les Droites the weather forecast for my final week in the Alps, with the exception of Monday, was supposed to be more settled, sunny and warm and it looked like the perfect opportunity to (finally) try and do the Täschhorn-Dom traverse which I’d been wanting to do for several years. Initially it seemed like a good idea to head up on the tuesday to the Mischabeljoch bivouac hut and do the traverse the following day, but after discovering the hut was fully booked for tuesday night we decided to scrap that plan. I wasn’t too sure about doing the traverse on thursday either since the forecast was showing cloudier weather so in the end I suggested to Graham that we go to the Jungfrau at the start of the week and try to do the Täschhorn-Dom traverse thursday/friday to make the most of the good weather. So the Jungfrau is where we ended up first.
After having had two DNS on the Jungfrau earlier in May due to changeable weather while we were at the Mönchjoch hut I was very hopeful that this might be a third-time-lucky kind of affair, albeit a more expensive one now that we were taking the express route back up to the Mönchjoch hut from Grindelwald by using the newly-built gondola which whisks you up to the Eigergletscher and then going the rest of the way up to the Jungfraujoch by train. At least we were both semi acclimatised for the rapid trip up to around 3500m! Since the hut “walk” was literally only about 45 minutes up the piste from the Jungfraujoch we could afford a late start from Evolene at around 1230 and still managed to arrive at the hut about an hour before dinner. The hut was relatively busy compared with 2 months ago, so at least we’d not had to spend a long afternoon there. Fortunately though the dormitory in which I was sleeping was not completely packed and there was a spare bed space next to me which I made use of. I hadn’t really expected to get much sleep, but the dormitory ended up being surprisingly quiet and I got a fairly decent amount of sleep considering we were sleeping in a hut at 3600m.
We took breakfast at 3 am along with many other teams. I reckon about half the people who stayed at the hut must have been going to the Jungfrau that morning, so I expected a decent track to plod up the mountain in! It was a clear and cool morning when we left and the snow had refrozen very nicely, so even though we went at a pretty gently pace (set mostly by me) we made relatively efficient progress across the Jungfraufirn and up to the foot of the east ridge, where it was necessary to scramble up a short section of rock. Just after rejoining the snow further up, the first rays of sun had started to emerge onto the upper part of the mountain and there was a very pretty pink glow. I think this was quite possibly the first decent sunrise I’d seen from any of the mountains I’d been up this summer.... and it didn’t disappoint! Despite the many people who’d left the hut earlier in the day, it seemed like everyone was quite nicely spread out and we’d not got stuck in any queues yet. Anyway, the snow ridge basically continued up to the Rottalsattel at quite an easy gradient and it was just straightforward walking on firm snow. Just below the Rottalsattel though there was a bergschrund to climb over, and the section just below the col was reasonably steep but well tracked. Definitely more of an axe-and-crampons kind of terrain rather than axe-and-ski poles sort of terrain, though it became a bit of a bottleneck where there were climbers both waiting to climb up as well as down. We didn’t have to wait more than about 5 or 10 minutes though.
From the slightly more wind-exposed Rottalsattel the route continued along the left hand edge of the southeast ridge, keeping close to rock. Although the lower part of the ridge had had some pretty good snow cover, the wind-scoured part of the ridge was somewhat icier so we switched between front pointing and traversing back and forth on the upper part of the ridge, depending on the steepness of the part of the ridge we were on. It didn’t seem to take a long time before we were at the summit though, where we arrived just before 8am. There was already a substantial gathering of folk on the summit which made for a very social atmosphere! Since it was such a beautiful morning we took a lovely long break and sat down to admire the views – and being my final 4000er in the Bernese Oberland it was hugely satisfying to be able to look back all the other Oberland 4000ers that I’d been up at some point or another in the last few years :-) It was also really good to have waited for perfect weather and snow conditions to come up here – and not tried to come up in the more changeable weather we’d had earlier in May. Moreover, I’d not had about 3 nights of poor sleep in a row prior to coming here this time, which I think can really result in a lack of motivation in my case. This morning I was definitely feeling fairly fresh and keen to climb the mountain, and it was a very nice experience for quite possibly the first time this summer. Most people had chosen to take a shortcut back down to the Jungfraujoch from just below the Rottalsattel, but we retraced the route of ascent. There had been some wet snow avalanches in the alternative route during the recent days (presumably after Monday’s new snowfall) so I didn’t really see the appeal of the shortcut. Moreover there was already a decent track in the ascent route which made it pretty swift to walk back down to the rock and with no one else in front or behind us on the way back down there were no queues at any point. I think we used just over 2.5 hours from the summit back to the Jungfraujoch, arriving back just before 11am so it wasn’t exactly a super-slow choice....
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