SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

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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I took the gondola from Grindelwald village at 1000m up to First at 2168m. My plan was to walk to Grosse Scheidegg on the north of the Schwarzhorn via Hagelseeli, Häxeseeli and the Blau Gletscherli. Really the Blau Gletscherli is not so much a glacier but more névé, that’s to say it’s snow left from the winter and has melted, refrozen and compacted down. Even so, this is traditionally early season for these slightly higher routes and it’s hard to know how snow and ice you might encounter.

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There’s a Google Earth file / GPS file here : 2007 07 01 Grindelwald.

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Unfortunately, although it was quite a nice day the snow really wasn’t very good at all. There had been some fresh snow overnight although I’d guess not a lot more than had fallen by the time I left yesterday.

We skied over by Kleine Scheidegg towards Wengen but the snow wasn’t really better over there at all.

In fact, as you can see it’s pretty bare as you get down to Wengen although the main problem is the heavy snow, it’s very hard work to keep moving it around with the skis.

The forecast for today was pretty clear it was going to be raining, in fact it was raining all night at home. Round at Grindelwald when I arrived this morning it was still raining and not surprisingly you couldn’t see the top of the mountain at all.I parked at Grund next to the Männlichenbahn bubble cars, the car park was pretty empty and I think the combination of the rain and the fact the clocks had changed kept people at home.

I prefer to use the Männlichenbahn, it’s pretty slow but it still feels quicker than the train up to Kleine Scheidegg. I took a few runs round the Männlichen and went over to Kleine Scheidegg to ski down into Wengen. It was pretty quiet over the Lauberhorn area and the snow wasn’t too bad, right at the top of the slopes there was a few centimeters of new snow but it was pretty wet towards the bottom. In fact I was pretty wet myself by the time I got to Wengen.

From Wengen I took the other Männlichenbahn back to the Männlichen and skied around for a while but it was pretty clear that the weather wasn’t going to improve to I called it a day and skied down.

Fortunately, I’d taken my Zag skis which float pretty well in all the slush so it was a bit easier than it might have otherwise been.