(all pictures are High res, for low 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 alHighed. 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 beHigh 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.
