SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

ascent : 705m, descent : 1180m
We got a weather forecast the night before in the Wildstrubelhütte which gave a pretty grim picture of the next 48 hours, high winds and snow storms starting in afternoon and worsening on Friday. So, like the start of our tour we had to change plans, originally we would have headed for the Lämmerenhütte and spent the night before making an ascent of the Daubenhorn on Friday with a descent to the Gemmipass and down in the lift to Leukerbad. But, high winds and avalanche risk ruled that out, we guessed the Leukerbad lift was unlikely to be running leaving us trapped up on the Gemmipass and there’s no way to ski down to Leukerbad from there. Another escape route would have been to traverse the Gemmipass and drop down to the Kandersteg where the lift was also likely to be closed and the potential ski descent to Kandersteg ruled out as too risky in the conditions.

So, the plan formed was to ascend first the Weisshorn (2948m) , on the slopes of which the Wildstrubelhütte stands, ski down to the Plaine Morte glacier (2700m) which is at the top of the Crans Montanna ski area, then ascend the Wildstrubel (3243m) itself before skiing down to the Gemmipass (2314m) hopefully outrunning the weather system by making an early start.

And there we are (photo) at 0640 on a cold morning outside the Wildstrubelhütte preparing for the short climb to the Weisshorn summit.

GPS / Google Earth Track File : download here


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This is the second day of my tour of the Gemmipass area, I’d stayed the night in Leukerbad and took the lift up again the next morning. Leukerbad has a fairly amazing position under some huge rock walls and there’s a completely mad track from the village up to the Gemmipass.

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This was cut out of the rock face during the early 1740’s so serve as a mule track and trade route. It’s staggering to think someone must have stood down in Leukerbad and thought they could see a way to make a track up the cliff !

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The Gemmipass is a trade route between the Valais and Bern cantons dating back to the early 1700’s when the mule track was cut into the rock faces above Leukerbad. The pass itself is pretty high at 2322m before dropping almost vertically into Leukerbad.

Kandersteg is somewhere I’ve not visited much, most recently I’ve passed through on the train to enter the Lötschberg Tunnel, this is the modern trade route between Bern and the Valais. This area has massive rock walls and steep slopes and the scenery is stunning. I’d taken the train from home via Bern and then direct to Kandersteg. This is pretty popular, there’s two trains taking the same route within two minutes of each other and they were both over 80% full, people with hiking and climbing gear heading for Kandersteg, changing at Speiz for the Jungfrau area or heading through the Lötschberg for the Valais.

I’d not fully decided what route to take until I arrived in Kandersteg. The simple option is to hike up to Sunnbüel at 1934m and then head straight over the pass the the Gemmipass itself. Taking the lift to Sunnbüel is an option but it cuts the hike too short. In the ten minutes I took to walk from the train station I decided to ride the lift to Sunnbüel but instead of taking the normal route I would climb the Gällihorn and traverse the Uschenegrat ridge before descending to the Schwarenbach Hotel for some lunch.

This is the first day of a two day route, after arriving in Leukerbad the next is from Leukerbad to Adelboden.

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