Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
ThomasKeefer
Trad climber
Between Tuscano and Liguria, Italia
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 9, 2009 - 11:25am PT
|
The thought of the Whymper group reaching the summit of the Matterhorn via the now well travelled Hornli ridge is amazing - the sheer magnitude of the puzzle of the routefinding combined with the gear they had at their disposable makes the success (with all due respect to the members of his party not finishing the descent alive) quite a feat. It was surely enough to fill a day for me and my buddy on Monday.
A San Diego partner currently in Germany and I had discussed plans to climb the Matterhorn a few months ago - with a date set on labor day weekend. The week before, there was a pretty sizably weather system over most of the alps which put fair ammount of snow on the ridge so we decided that we should shift plans to the NW face of Gran Paradiso. As the week came to a close, though, the weather had cleared and the forecast got markedly better with lots of sun forecasted from Thursday afternoon on... back the plan one - Hornli Ridge.
Zermatt is a pretty cool town to spend some time in. If going, the first step is to illegally drive your car all the way into town and wonder why there are no other cars around. No worries for me though - I have the "I" on my license plates at the moment so the Swiss just shake their heads and think "when will the Italians listen". There really are no signs, though, until you are already past where it matters. I turned about without any problems and headed back to Tasch to catch a train back into Zermatt to meet up with Mike.
After a few beers we went back to Tasch (he confessed he had first driven into the town center as well) to sleep and get ready for the route.
Sunday, we got up and were at the train station at a leisurely pace - the approach to the Hornli Hutte is only 700m+.
Mike at the station:
It was a cool time to be in Zermatt since it is the annual festival celebrating the mtn culture of the town. Walking toward the gondola, we came across a group getting ready for something:
the objective. The Hornli ridge is the ridge splitting the sunny and shady face of the Matterhorn.
The approach is just a couple hours if you take the lift... which we did of course. This is the top of the station.
Even the trail signs are perfect in Switzerland!
The approach is actually a great walk in itself.. you can ponder the route which looms above the entire time. You do have to ignore the constant thumping of helicoptors flying people all over the place to do everything from ski to skydive to check out the summit.
Soon enough, you are at the Hornli hut
Not a bad setting for a mid afternoon snack at 3260m. Since you are at the border between CH and IT, you can enjoy traditional Rösti und Eier which I did...
or Pesto
There are just so many objectives in this valley it is amazing. I think there are 14 named peaks just in the Monta Rosa traverse. Here are Castor, Pollux, Briethorn and a few others (I think)
And a few others a bit further north
At the hut, the caretaker is a super sarcastic lady who was giving me the 'you are so full of Sh!t look' when I tried to explain to her that I had left my Club Alpino Italiano card in the car - saving me 8 CHF on the hut price. In the end she gave it to me. The hut food is great, as is usual for these places, but not cheap.. The atmoshphere is a pretty cool - many different groups all the with same objective. You can also do Zmutt ridge from the Hornli hut but no one was - in fact pretty much everyone had a guide. There were 6 or 7 groups without, us among them, but here it is pretty standard. It is really cool that guiding is actually a pretty economically viable profession in the alps. Guides are making the equivilant of 250-800 dollars per day depending on the route (each of the guided clients here were paying about 1000bucks!!!).
We got up at the prescribed 4:30 time for a quick breakfast and started the route at a fixed rope at 5:00 - in a que for about 10mins!
The first part of the route is a series of steps leading to a ramp with short sections of 4th and easy fifth although rarely does it get easier than 3rd class. Here, Mike is traversing the second gendarme on the route about 2/3 of the way to the Solvay hut ('emergencies' only)
The climb stays on the left side of the actual ridge when you are below the Solvay Hut.
The climbing is never hard but never overly easy, either. The rock quality is amazing.
Time wise, the Solvay hut is supposed to be the halfway point for the ascent - just over 4000m - about 800m above the Hornli hut and 400 below the summit. We roped up just after here to pass the most technical part of the climbing (maybe 5.6).
For just having a bit of a dumping of snow, the route was really dry high up. Here we decided to put on the points in the interest of being able to move faster.
At this point, some of the guided groups were descending through. We were about 200m below the summit. The guides really have it dialed into to process - they are served breakfast first so that they can get on the route earlier then they literally pull their clients along gasping for breath, give them 2 minutes on the summit to take a photo and then push them down the route as they downclimb; all the while yelling at them for not being technically sound - which ironically is why there are guides in the first place.
A bit higher, near the summit ridge about 1030.
Along the route there are several fixed ropes..
Mike on the Italian summit (a couple m lower but more impressive)
Me on top
We started the descent at about noon.. a bit late to make it back for the last cable car but not so bad. The descent went pretty slowly for a variety of reasons but became somewhat of a party by the time we passed the Solvay hut. We joined up with a guide and his client who were Russian, a Spainiard and some former Royal Marines. We had a good time trying to figure out where the route was on the descent - it got easier once it was jsut about dark since we had climed that section when it was just about dark that morning. We saw the lights on the Hornli hut as an ever present beacon of where the beer was and continued down using a combination of rapping and downclimbing. It is much faster, as always, to downclimb but with all the ropes we had between us, we developed a pretty good system.
We stepped foot back at the base of the route just after 9pm - 16 hours after we started - pretty slow but successful!
The Brits bought the beers and the hut gaurdian was gracious enough to spend an unplanned night in the Hornli - I resolve someday to learn to sleep better over 3000m - living at sea level doesnt seem to help that though.
After waking up once for the 4:30 climbers revile, we woke up again around 7:00 to sign the summit log...
And then start the walk back down after enjoying watching the moonset over the route.
The Hornli ridge is a true testament to the hardmen of the day. It is by far the hardest via normale I have done. Even with the crowds, the experience is a great one. The views from the top are simply amazing.
|
|
rhyang
climber
SJC
|
|
Very cool !
|
|
hooblie
climber
|
|
it never gets old seeing the younguns have at it
|
|
Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
|
|
|
|
Josh Nash
Social climber
riverbank ca
|
|
oh that matterhorn.....
not
not
|
|
bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
|
|
Wow!!
That is an awesome peak.
|
|
rockermike
Mountain climber
|
|
Josh, Have you done "THAT" Matterhorn? (your first photo). I'm thinking of making a trip up there this coming weekend. Solo, but with a rope. Any advice or tips? Is it worth the effort?
Nice TR above. What is the rating on that in "American" talk?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
|
|
Another European trip report provoking great nostalgia! My group tried the Matterhorn in early October of 1970 and there were only five us on the mountain that day. As a result, we wasted a lot of time with route finding. One advantage of having guided parties up there is that it's easier to see where to go.
Two of our group got lost and never made it more than a third up, while I stopped at the Solvay Hut so that Frank could continue on faster than I could go, as it was getting late. As he ascended alone he met an old German man also soloing the mountain and they roped together for the steep snow field at the top.
It's a long way down and eventually we ran into the two who were lost and and all five of us ended up bivouacing. It wasn't too cold and we had a good time singing in three different languages and sharing food (the old German man thought our California style gorp was quite interesting). During the night we watched the Big Dipper do a complete circle in the sky. When it returned to its starting point, it began to get light and we descended to the Hornli for breakfast. A couple of weeks after this adventure, we were in good shape to do Mt. Blanc.
A trip I enjoyed even more, was a ski trip to Zermatt in December of 1971 where we took the lift up as far as we could and climbed the Breithorn from there on skis with seal skins. The lifts run from Zermatt all the way to the top of the pass connecting Switzerland and Italy. From there many people ski down to Italy but we did the Breithorn instead. Very strange experience skiing with a rope on and prussiks in your pocket because of the crevasses on the glacier.
Meanwhile Peter Haan has reposted my photos of the Matterhorn and Breithorn in winter in a much improved version below.
|
|
Josh Nash
Social climber
riverbank ca
|
|
rockermike,
no I haven't but it is on my to do list. I was going to do it this year but my third child being born put a damper on this climbing season."Hey sweetheart I am going to leave you for a few days. I know you just had a c-section and are going to be home alone with a 2 year old a 4 year old and the baby. What's that, you want to cut off my nuts?" there are some good trip reports on this very site that are helpfull.
|
|
Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
|
|
Very nice!
The Assiniboine of the Alps, as some here call it. :-)
|
|
tom Slater
Trad climber
Central Coast CA
|
|
Great job! My partner and I got to the last fixed ropes but were forced to turn around due to time. It was 1pm and our turn around time was noon-1pm. We were just too slow, and the huge wind gusts were freakin' us out. They almost knocked me off the ridge. My opinion of the rock was different. I thought the rock quality was horrible, the biggest pile of rubble I've ever been on. But I am used to the Sierra so? One question: on that last vertical fixed rope before the summit ridge, how do you ascend/descend the rope? Batman it with a prusik? Then somehow pass the fixed points? I've always wondered. The rope is like 2" thick and super slick and you can't get an ascender on it. I had never done anything like that (first Euro trip). Thanks to anyone who HAS DONE IT who can clue me in.
|
|
Dick Erb
climber
June Lake, CA
|
|
I once climbed the North Face of the Matterhorn in winter in a matter of minutes. That was during my first professional climbing job,playing the role of Otto, one of Disneyland's Swiss Mountain climbers.
|
|
ThomasKeefer
Trad climber
Between Tuscano and Liguria, Italia
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 9, 2009 - 01:50pm PT
|
-The rating in American terms is Complete Exum Ridge ++
-To get through the fixed ropes, you just batman them - it is steep enough that if you let go you would get pretty roughed up but not so steep that it is super hard - except when doing the big traverse after Solvay - there you should clip in since it is damn near vertical or more and you dont want to fall there.
-Hmmm, about the rock quality, for a big mountain, that gets a freeze thaw cycle just about every day the rock is pretty good. Ok, the granite on the Hulk is pretty amazing - it is nothing like that on the Matterhorn - but it is pretty close to the rock in the Tetons.
-As for routefinding - I think that it is possible to find the route pretty easily if you find a few key passages. If you get too far off route, you are F'ed.
|
|
Slater
Trad climber
Central Coast
|
|
Seriously? So the leader just batmans up the whole pitch? That's gnarly. Do you clip in pro someplace on your way up or what? You'd get really f-ed up if you fell. And it's above 14,000' and a long long way from help. I can see if you're being guided and they have you on TR, but on lead you just do the batman? Those last ropes below the summit seemed pretty damn steep to me.
|
|
ThomasKeefer
Trad climber
Between Tuscano and Liguria, Italia
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 9, 2009 - 03:54pm PT
|
I think that I am a pretty conservative climber but for sure there are many places where if you fall you would be seriously hurt at best. if you felt you needed gear, the best thing would be to thrown a prussik on the fixed rope and then clip a biner to it but it did not seem all that necessary with the good feet available. The route is one where if you are super hesitant climbing with that potential then you just need a guide.
That being said, I am not a very good climber and am out of shape at that so if I did it, it is pretty likely that you could as well.
|
|
roy
Social climber
New Zealand -> Santa Barbara
|
|
Excellent trip report! Thanks for posting.
Cheers, Roy
|
|
tom Slater
Trad climber
Central Coast CA
|
|
Thomas, yeah, we did it all the way to the summit pyramid but stopped at the last fixed rope. We had never enountered one like that (plenty on big walls etc.) but none that thick. Just curious. It looked scary swinging in the 40-50mph wind gusts with ice raining down from above. It snowed like a mother the next day so we made the right choice because we probably would have ended up in the S Hut. Still gives me the chills. But perhaps if we had just gotten on those ropes it wouldn't have been that bad? Thanks, I've always wondered.
|
|
Scared Silly
Trad climber
UT
|
|
Here is a great Matterhorn story that was told to me by the late Bob Bates. He and Eric Shipton were in Zermatt one summer in the 60s and decided to hike up to the Hornli hut for lunch. As they hiked up they noticed another hiker coming up behind them. Bates described him as a short guy wearing all black and walking quite fast.
When they arrived at the hut they got their lunch and were eating away when this other hiker walks in a bit out of breath. He went over and talked to the hut keeper for a minute and then came over to Bates and Shipton.
He looked at Shipton and said "Are you Eric Shipton?" Shipton said "yes." The guy sticks out his hand to Shipton and says "I want to thank you for helping me escape from a prisoner camp during the war." Shipton looks at him with a great surprise and says "I never helped anyone escape from a prisoner camp."
To which the guy in black says "Oh, but if it were not for your book "Blank on the Map" I would not have been able to make it to Tibet." And at that point he introduces himself ... Heinrich Harrer.
|
|
'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
|
|
Hey, thanks for a really superb photo trip report! I would love to climb the mountain one day. I was in Cervina on the Eye-talian side back in September of 93, and never even saw the mountain cuz of the bad weather.
|
|
Dolomite
climber
Anchorage
|
|
Nice tr, TK, thanks! A good reminder of why classics are classics. Been there twice, prepared (ha!) to do it, conditions too gnarly both times. Hope to get back.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!