Tag: 4000m

In order to prepare we were hiking in the Italy Sella Group for 5 days. We slept on about 2500-2800 meters for some nights and tried to accustom our tired bones to what was upon us. While we were in Italy the Finsteraarhorn was quite far away - we really enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the hospitality there.

Then we took the train to Grindelwald - Switzerland. We had a nice accomodation in the DownTown Lodge. After two days of rain (which we more or less spent in the bouldering hall and the swimming pool nearby) we decided to hike to the Schreckhorn Hut before loosing all our acclimatization again. During this hike it already came back in our minds that the mountains in Switzerland are something different than the Dolomites or the Allgäu.

Now, we are sitting on the Kleine Scheidegg in Switzerland on 2061m above ground on the cosy sun terrace of the Grindelwaldblick restaurant looking at the summit of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Tomorrow our tour is going to start.

Our plan: Walking to the Finsteraarhorn Hut over the Jungfraufirn and the "Grünhorn Lücke" (first day). Then getting up quite early, hiking over another glacier and rocks to the "Hugi Sattel" (4088m). From there it goes further up following the ridge up to the summit of Finsteraarhorn on 4274m (and then back to the Finsteraarhorn Hut) (second day). For the third morning the plan is to descend over Rotloch and Oberaarjoch to Oberaarsee.

Looking at the summit of Mönch some lost memories from last year come back to our mind - also doubts and the question why we are actually doing this. Up to now the tour to the summit of Mönch was the "biggest" thing we have done so far. It is so nice sitting here in the sun drinking our coffee... our life is good as it is... why the hell should we go up this dumb rock... But we are also getting excited. Will we be able to do it? How will it be up there? The great view all around... only few people have the chance to stand up there... and so the day passes.

 

In 2011 we wanted to go up a mountain that is higher than 4000m. Therefore we sent an e-mail to the Swiss mountaineering school GrindelwaldSports and asked which one would be suitalbe. They suggested that we could go up the Mönch which is 4107m high. We trusted them and so in August we travelled to Grindelwald to go up this mountain. To acclimatize we did a tour to the Gleckstein Hut. When we went back to Grindewald the day before we wanted to go up the Mönch it was rainy and cloudy. But the weather forecast was promising. So after a hot shower at the hostel we re-packed our bags and took the Jungfraujochbahn from Grindelwald to Kleine Scheidegg and from Kleine Scheidegg to the Jungfraujoch. The train was full with Asian people who took photos all the time! We stopped at Eigergletscher and Eismeer to have a look down the Eiger north face. Unfortunately it was so cloudy that we  could see nothing. It is a bit scary to know that this train goes through such a mountain.

We leave the train at a  tunnel and walk a long time until we are out again. When we leave the tunnel it was very foggy, you could only see the next three metres. We started to walk to the Mönchsjochhütte. At this moment we did not feel that the air was thinner. We felt quite well. After around 45 minutes we arrived at the hut. This was a special one! We have never been on a hut at this height before! The people were all very friendly and the owner of the hut, a woman called Heidi, greeted us when we came in. Now it was snowing outside.. and still very foggy. But inside the hut it was very warm and comfortable. We had something to drink and waited for dinner... Meanwhile a very strong headache started to begin.. and the longer we sat the the worse it became.. When it was time for food we were not hungry! We could not believe it, we had not eaten a lot this day. Then there was a lot food and we could not eat it. Combined with a lot of water it was possbile to eat a bit.. Nevertheless the chocolate pudding was the highlight of the dinner and it was easy to eat - at least now we had something in our stomaches. We continued to drink lots of apple juice and water. On our table sat a British guide and his customer and some people from Switzerland. We had a short chat. They wanted to do the Eiger! And wanted to the Mönch at first and then go up to the Mittelegihut. It seemed as if we were the only people at the hut who had not before been on such high mountains.

We slept ok... the air was quite thin and Carsten woke up every few hours... and I had to go to the toilet for three times because I drunk so much before (the toilet was outside and I think it was around 0 degrees or below..). The next morning the sun was shining and it was the bluest sky we had ever seen! We had breakfast and went outside to enjoy the great view! Only snow, mountains, sunshine and blue sky! What a great day to go up the Mönch! We met our guide at a Swiss flag not far away from the hut. His name was Martin and he was really nice. We immediately started to go up - and it went quite well! We could ascend at a good pace and passed some other people. We had a break after around the half of the ascend and enjoyed the view around! We could see the Aletschgletscher and all the surrounding moutains! What an amazing view! We continued to walk up - sometimes you had to walk on the snow and ice and other times you had to climb up rock. That made the ascend very diversified and interesting. Around 200 metres before the summit a very narrow and steep ridge begins. I think this was the most difficult part of the climb! And not for the body, but for the mind! On both sides it goes down for more than 500 metres and there is only a path as wide as one shoe.. But without looking down too often it was doable 😉 So after only one hour and forty minutes we reached the summit of the Mönch! What a good feeling! We had a short break and the guide explained all the surrounding summits. Because there were many people coming up we decided to go down immediately. We took one last photo and then Carsten had to go in front and lead us down. We felt good and went quickly down. When we were back on the normal path to the Mönchsjochhütte and someone could see us coming down he clapped his hands 🙂 What a good feeling to have done it! We really enjoyed this tour but we were also very happy to be down again. We said good-bye to Martin and went back to the Mönchsjochhütte to have something to drink and eat. Again we were not really hungry but we tried to eat some Gulaschsoup. After that we decided to go down to Grindwald, so we took the train and arrived safely back at the hostel were we cooked an amazing dinner and had a good glas of wine 🙂 This was our first, but definitely not our last mountain above 4000 metres.

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