The story part III. The giant

Now of course it was NOT my desire to spend the following perfect days hauling equipment from base camp to Zermatt and then traveling to Chamonix, France. In Zermatt I went to the guides' office and ask if Matterhorn is climbable. As you can see from the photo it is almost completely white, which apparently means that it's not climbable, especially by novice mountaineer intermediate climber like myself (seems the problem is not getting up, even if there are around 1200 m of climbing, but getting down, because you cannot find the rappel points in the snow). This left me in tears outside the office, but let's not talk about this now ... [Did you know that Dufourspitze costs 400 euros to climb with a guide!? Not including a preparation climb which you have to do before, which is around 200 euros ... Matterhorn is around 1000 euros to climb!!]

Thus we decided that Mont Blanc (4808m, the highest in the Alps) will be doable - it being covered in snow is no biggie, unless there's avalanche risk - so we had to leave for Chamonix. Proposed route: again, start from 2300 m, go higher than the Gouter refuge (3800m), camp there and then in the same night attempt the peak. The slope is much much more steep and our backpacks were nearly as heavy because our stove was misbehaving so we had to carry water to save some time on the cooking (we had to melt snow otherwise). Plus at one point you have to cross a slope from one rocky point to another and there are rocks that fall from above, which means that you literally have to run for it and you are wearing crampons and your heavy backpack. Then it's just climbing, sometimes using ice axe but always with crampons (even though you are rock climbing).

We arrived in the camp around three. M. started building a wall to protect the tent from the fierce wind, and I started cooking! Yey!! It took me about one hour, one hour and a half to get the water boiling, and then M. around two hours to make the tea for the night ascent. Which means that, instead of eating two times (once to replenish our lost energy on that horrendous climb and once for the climb ahead) we only ate once.






We woke up around one thirty am, had some tea and some horrible cookie (too sweet) and manage to leave the tent around two. We were so drained of energy that the first slope up the Dome du gouter (4302m - we climbed it on the descent from Mont Blanc) got that horrible cookie flowing upstream, which made me really dizzy. When I saw two spanish climbers turning back though, and thought at what they must be feeling I decided that I didn't want to feel like that and moved on! Yey!!



There were a lot of people ahead of us, but because of the wind they decided to wait in the Valois refuge (4400m i think), which got us around the first ten on the summit around six o'clock!! There were some nice steep and sharp ridges to climb but after the dufourspitze one, they seemed so easy...

We spent around twenty minutes on the summit (the wind was very fierce) and then around nine we were back in the tent. We fell asleep as we were, I was wearing my harness, my sunglasses, gore-tex suit, everything except rope and boots :) We woke up around twelve and by five we were down at the train station at 2300m waiting for the train for Houches, then into a supermarket for some cheese and bread [mmmmm] then to the camping site and then to sleep!!! Whoa!!


The next day we went to visit Chamonix. I liked it much much better than Zermatt. Maybe it's the latin feeling or something ... but I just loved it. And all the equipment stores!!! Omg ... there were in Zermatt also but very expensive ... here they were quite reasonable ... mmmm ... Didn't buy anything, except some tshirts and a pair of merrell shoes that were on sale and unfortunately too small for me in the end ... alas ...

The story part I. I get there but I am not lucky

Two hours after I'd arrived in Bucharest I was at my place packing things for the trip to the Alps. Very happy to see my mom and my dog but anxious to get everything out of Marian's backpack and put all my climbing gear in. At that time I was still missing ice axe and crampons, but M. was bringing them down. By the way, M. was already on his way to my place for us to get going. I think it took us about four hours to leave my place. Everything was nice and packed in the car and off we went. We left my place around 6 pm, managed to get out of Bucharest around 8 pm and get to the border by 3 am, which is quite a long time if you know how M. drives. I slept in the car almost all the way to the border, but was fresh by 5 am when we got to Budapest. I drove on the autobahn until Stralzburg and M. took over and drove till Tasch. Our destination was Zermatt, but cars are not allowed there so we camped in Tasch (actually in Randa, which is close to Tasch, but nevermind).

The weather was extraordinary, as you can see from these two pics. Of course, knowing my luck, it was bound to get shitty. The plan was as follows: Dufourspitze, Nordend, Liskam, Weisshorn, and Matterhorn. The last three are listed as AD (assez difficile - sort of difficult), while the first two are listed as PD (peu difficile - a little difficult) - this of course changes depending on the weather.

The next day we were supposed to meet some guys from the Arad branch of the Explorer club at the basecamp at 3100m on the Gorner glacier. Now, there is a refuge on the Gorner glacier at 2900m called Monte Rosa Hutte, but one night there costs around 50 euro, so the practice for most east europeans is to haul all the camp gear (tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, stoves, food, cutlery) to 3100 m and camp there. Basically, while going up and down the slopes that lead to Monte Rosa and our camp, you can tell by the size of the backpacks who comes from eastern europe and who doesn't. Guess where do I come from? :)

You can actually tell from the picture that the weather was turning shitty. You have to trust me on this: behind that rock you can see Matterhorn on a clear day! The guys from Arad were already attempting Dufourspitze. I think they were very silly to rush it. Normally what you do when you first reach the mountain (so you are not acclimatized) is go up to the 3100 m camp, rest there, the next day in the morning walk a bit higher on the slopes then at night attempt the peak.
[Why do you start your climb at night? To ensure that the snow bridges over the crevasses are frozen. If you start your climb during the day you stand a very good chance of finding them bridgeless and thus difficult to cross.] So the guys from Arad rushed it and attempted and climbed Dufourspitze from the first day they got there, which was good because the weather forecast was nasty for the next 5 days, but bad because it left many of them deadly beat [one of them nearly had a stroke because after they got down to Zermatt he drank two or three beers. Sheesh!!!!]

So the weather was turning bad and we were looking at five days stuck in the tent. We roughly had food for 5 days, but what to do with the boredom? Needless to say that stuck in the tent means STUCK IN THE TENT, just go out to go toilet and that's it!! For entertainment we had M.'s ipod, the D200 camera and it's manual plus a book with all the 4000m alpine peaks. Ironically, I spent 5 days reading about peaks that I never got a chance to climb. Everyday we would get about 2 hrs of good weather which allowed us to walk around, walk up towards Dufourspitze, up on the Gorner glacier, etc. In one of those hikes (when i say walk, i generally mean walk up on at least 50 degress slopes) the weather was pretty good but there were no tracks (because of the heavy snow fall on the previous night) so we lost the way to Dufouspitze: instead of going right and up a slope, between some seracs, we went left and nearly stumbled on a cornice. We had to return to the tent because the weather was returning to normal (i.e foggy with high chances of snow). The forecast i got from Marian's text messages was confirming what we saw: 60% chances of rain, 40,30,10,0,0!! (the last zeroes were on sunday and monday, this was tuesday, alas!)
You can imagine my happiness when the clouds lifted for the first time and I could see all those huge mountains surrounding the plateau!! It was amazing!! I felt so small and yet so happy and content! I always get this feeling when I see big rock walls, can you imagine now that I saw 2 thousand meter rock and snow and ice walls? mmmm
This is me looking professional. Dufourspitze is those rocks somewhere in the backround, roughly 4-6 hours from where I am standing. The amazing thing is that everything looks so close but it's damn far once you start walking towards it.
And of course ... being snowed in is always a pleasure, but not when you have 7 days left and you haven't climbed anything.