(all pictures are low res, for high res click here)
Before I jump in and discuss our climbs based out of
Wengen, I
want to spend a moment going over our entry and departure city of
Zurich, Switzerland. Before I left for
this trip, I spent a lot of time thinking thru the
gear list.
.
My goal was to go as light as I possibly could, but more on that later.
Zurich actually is a gorgeous town, and one of the more fun places in Europe. As
I took one step out of my hotel I
knew that I was in for a treat, as I saw one of Europe's unique
SmartCars parked across the street.
Incidently, the Smartcar has been on
display at MoMA in
NYC as an outstanding representation of automotive art. I've only seen one
of them in the US, but if you want one, check
this out. As I continued thru Zurich
, I walked to old town
while going over some gorgeous water
. Finally we left Zurich and
drove to Interlaken
for a nice lunch and some outstanding views of the Jungfrau.
.
After lunch we continued our journey to the town of
Lauterbrunnen
(see if you can find the Swiss flag in this picture!) where we had to ditch our
van and continue on via train to the
town of Wengen at 4180 ft.
.
Besides being home to the Lauberhorn
Skiing World Cup, Wengen is also a gorgeous and quite little village where
most cars are not allowed. The only vehicles found are electric cars owned by
the hotels. In Wengen, we stayed at the
Hotel Falken which was a quaint little place that offered great views from
our rooms, even when it was cloudy
. Once there, Lansing (my
climbing partner on my rope team) and I, decided to take a telepheric
ride to the top of Männlichen where we
could look down on the village
. From the top (7,300 ft) we
were given some great views of the high grasslands used for grazing
and some stupendous views of the
Eiger
and Jungfrau
. Meanwhile I also thought I'd
take some artistic shots of the avalanche fences
.
That night began the first in a series of horrendous weather that
plagued most of
Europe. We reluctantly headed up to
Kleine-Scheidegg where the view of the Jungfrau and Eiger were impaired due
to the impeding weather system.
.
We continued on to the
Jungfraujoch -
the Top of Europe via the Jungfraubahn thru the center of the Eiger. Yes,
the train actually goes thru the center of the mountain. Here's a map of our
railway journey. At the top, you are
finally at the Jungfraujoch (11,782
ft), which is essentially a little touristy observation deck that
includes
(weather was still bad) a
resturant
, an ice palace
with sculptures cut into the glacier
and other attractions (like dog
sledding and tyrolienne traverse rides) as well as a tunnel that leads to
the actually glaciers
. This was the starting point
for Wengen climbing adventure.
After a quick bite at the restaurant, we headed out on to the glacier and
hiked for about an hour up to the
Mönchsjochhütte (11,976ft) which is where lived for the next couple days.
The beautiful thing about climbing in the Alps is that you don't have to bring a
sleeping bag, food, stove, or tent with you anywhere. There are
huts built on most climbing
routes. These huts are staffed with cooks who make your food
(Steve, Bill and Lansing are in this picture), have plenty of water (though if
you want bottled water it cost about $9 a bottle! - so most people bought
melted snow water which was about $1.50/liter), and the beds are fairly nice
(here's Bill and Steve - two of the other clients on the trip). The only problem
is that there are tons of people who stay in these huts, so it can get noisy.
The cost to stay there
was about $30/night. The weather up top was not cooperating, so the next day we
had to cancel our climb of the
Mönch and climb the
Walcherhorn instead. The Walcherhorn (3,692m ~ 12,000+ ft)
is
fairly easy peak, which gets to be a little bit harder when you are climbing in
a whiteout
. However, we made it to the top
within a couple of hours (3, I think). After a quick break we headed back
(Lansing, Bill and Paul) to the hut. It's funny how climbing without
acclimitization has a profound effect on the body. I was super tired after just
this 4 hour trip. When we got back to the hut, we learned that the weather was
supposed to clear up the next day, so we made plans to climb the Jungfrau the
next morning.
At 4:00 am we got up, ate breakfast and began our climb of the Jungfrau
. I
had a super light pack (no down jacket, no shell pants) and we headed up the
mountain at a fairly fast clip. As the sun came up at 6, we were blessed with
some amazing views of the Alps
. Here's a view of the
Jungfraujoch and the Mönch
. As daylight crept up the
mountains, the beauty increased.
. The climbing became a little
more technical with this rock face we had to climb.
We guessed it was mainly class
4, with a couple easy class 5 moves -- however we were on
belay for
most the rock climbing anyway. At the top of the rock, we stopped for a few more
photos 
(Lansing)
meanwhile the route flattened
out a little bit for us
. At this point we also had a
pretty neat view of the Jungfraujoch
. We kept going higher and
higher 
until we came upon some pretty scary knife ridges
that had to be traversed - each
knife ridge easily had over 1,000 ft exposure on each side. This scared the crap
out of me.. After some 80 degree ice climbing and rest stepping (oh my god this
was tiring!) we finally made it to the summit (13,641 ft)!!!
(these are a couple really neat pictures! If you look closely behind me you can
see the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Mont Blanc. Also, if you look into my glasses
you can see Paul and Lansing taking my picture).
Lansing - Me - Paul
On the way down, we had to once again traverse the knife ridges and down
climb the 80 degree ice. However, the sun had been out for a while now and the
ice had turned to very crappy snow - the type of snow that is great for
snowballs but terrible for crampons. As we were climbing, I am super grateful
that there were belay stantions there, as Paul had us on belay for this part. Of
course, the snow balled up my crampons and I actually fell twice, and Lansing
fell once. Let me tell you, falling down 80 degree snow that has a 1,000+ ft
drop below will scare the crap out of you -- and needless to say, this did.
The lesson I learned was that downclimbing is so much tougher if you don't have
antiballing plates on your
crampons. After our little scare, we climbed back to the Jungfraujoch
and took the Jungfraubahn back to Klein-Scheindegg for celebratory brat and beer
at the resturant.
.
After a couple fun days of climbing, we were off to our next adventure city -- Chamonix, France.
