SnowSlider – Blogging From the mountains by ise

This is a local or Swiss thing, the route over the Lötschenlücke is reckoned to be a sort of Swiss vallee blanche which might be about right as a Swiss version would probably involve a couple of hours climbing and the use of public transport. The Lötschenlücke itself is a high pass between the Bernese Alps, connecting the Lötschental valley to the Aletsch Glacier in the canton of Valais.

I decide to leave my car in Spiez and take the 0556 train to Interlaken before switching to the Jungfrau trains changing at Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg, this makes sense as on the return I can hop off the train at Spiez and be home earlier. This being Switzerland of course there’s a fair few ski tourers boarding the train already.

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The Allalinhorn is one of the 4000m peaks above Saas Fee and it’s possible to make the summit on skis from the top of the lift system. The forecast for the day wasn’t brilliant and I wasn’t really sure if we’d get clear weather or not but driving up to Saas Fee in the morning I could see it was going to clear.

We managed to ride on of the first lifts and we were at the top of the lift system around 0900 before the top drag lifts were running so we started to make the climb straight out of the cable car, a rising traverse under the north side of the Allalinhorn itself.


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