Bad day on the Mönch
15th September 2007
Looking back the signs for the day didn’t look so good. I’d arrived at Grindelwald at about 0645 in plenty of time for the first train and sat in the car with a cup of coffee from my Thermos. But, looking up the mountain I was already beginning to think the clouds on the summits were heavy and maybe more than were going to clear during the day. The next surprise was that due to some confusion at the guides office the person I’d been expecting to join for the climb had pulled out earlier in the week and the guide had been expecting just one client. After some discussion we decided to make a group of three but the other client had some concerns about his fitness before we left.The plan was to climb the normal route of the Mönch, that’s the south-east ridge passing the minor summit and then moving on the main summit at 4109m. The Mönch is one of the big three summits of the area, the others being the Eiger and the Jungfrau. Legend has it the Jungfrau, or virgin in German, is protected from the Eiger or ogre by the Mönch or monk.
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To access the Mönch normal route you first head from the top of the Jungfraujoch towards the Mönchhutte and then start to climb the rock ridge just above the path. But, the visibility wasn’t good at all and you could only see a few hundred metres.
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The climbing alternates between rock and snow ridges. I find the steeper rock sections really quite enjoyable but it’s clear that the other client is having some problems.
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By now we’re at about 4000m and the visibility is just awful, above left is a view back down the ridge and with the mist it’s impossible to guess from the photograph then angle of the pitch. It’s at this point that the other client reached the decision he’s not able to continue, by now we’re only a 100m or so below the summit in terms of height but there’s a lengthy traverse along a snow covered arete to come and, of course, we’d need to descend.
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Obviously this means that we’re going to have stop and start our descent. I’m disappointed of course but there’s no way you can carry on if one of the party isn’t able to so there’s no real decision to be made and we start to make our descent. Had the visibility been good I’d have been more disappointed I think but as you couldn’t really see a lot I didn’t think we’d missed much. The cloud did move a little but the window where it was clear on the summit was no more than a couple of minutes and I doubt we’d have hit that.Above left is me near one of the belay points protecting part of the ridge and above right is the guide in a rare minute when a strong gust of wind suddenly cleared the sky.
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Above left, looking at the Jungfrau also sitting in some cloud. Above right, the lower rock sections of the Mönch SE ridge.
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And this is a shot looking down to Konkordiaplatz and the Aletsch glacier, I’ve skied down here and climbed the Lötschenlücke as a ski tour back in the spring.So, sadly my attempt to climbed the Mönch failed this time which happens in the mountains sometimes sadly, but no one was injured and in the end safety concerns have to come first. I’ll just have to return another day complete the route. I wanted to go on (another day) and climb the Eiger and Jungfrau as well to get all three summits but that’s probably going to need to wait until next season now.
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