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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The forecast predicted heavy snow overnight with light snow this morning before brightening up at lunch time. That fitted my schedule quite well so I was around at the car park in Moléson village at midday and had a quick snack before starting to climb up.


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Here we are, day four at a fairly leisurely 0500 start and hitting the hill at 0615. The night was spent in the Tracuit Hut which at 3270m is fairly high, the hut was pretty busy probably due to such superb conditions.

So far the tour has just been extraordinary, the best trip I’ve made this year really and that’s due in large part to the guide Fredy Tscherrig who set the trip up, his knowledge of the area is just stunning and his passion for it is obvious.

For me today is the point of the trip, in some ways the point of the season and probably of life itself! I’ve spent the season skiing in the Val d’Anniviers and one of the reasons I actually ski tour is to explore more of the valley. Now we are at 3270m high up in the Anniviers, three days into the trip and ready to make an ascent of he Bishorn at 4153m. The Bishorn is a “ski 4000″ so we’re going to be able to make all but the last few metres on skis.

I used Adobe LightRoom to make a web slideshow of the whole trip, view slideshow here.


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