Due to, or maybe better thank to...the extreme heat of previous days, all snow on Matterhorn is molten away. Even the north face is basically completely free of snow. The weather looks as stable as the example of "indifferent equilibrium" in a physics textbook...so the conclusion is pretty easy: go climb the Matterhorn! Luckily the good old friend Glauco never says no...and off we go!
When I tried it two years ago there was a lot more anticipation. We decided to try it somewhere in June and already reserved the huts for August. Then waited a very long time hoping for the conditions to be good...so the whole thing built up some sort of expectation and the hype was higher and higher.
This time instead the decision was taken pretty quickly. I normally have those kind of ideas from time to time...so within a few hours I thought about it, looked at conditions and forecast (very good) contacted a friend and booked the hut!
To try and avoid the big mess on a Sunday morning we decide to take a day off from work and to walk up the hut on Friday in order to attempt the summit on Saturday. Walking up the hut is longer than I remember but nevertheless a very nice walk. Of course we walk all the way up from Zermatt, not even thinking about taking the cable car. More than anything, it will be good for acclimatization. In a bit more than 4 hours we finally get to the fully renovated hut and after a few refreshing drinks we decide to rope up and start climbing at least for 30 minutes in order to see where the route goes. We know we'll start in the dark...and route finding on this big piece of rock is not easy even in full daylight!
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| Classical picture on the way up |
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| It starts to get bigger... |
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| And there it is once at the hut...that's big... |
In fact we do miss the proper route a few times, and to my surprise the very first minutes look more difficult than what I remember from two years ago! In the end I realize that I only need to get used to the type of rocks, and on the way down it gets better. We are both already quite tired. In the previous days it was soo bloody hot that sleeping was not really an easy task...probably that is the reason. so we decide that we'll try the summit the next day, but without any expectation...a bit like when you have a first date with a girl :)!
The rule for the morning start did not change. Breakfast is at 3:30 and before 3:50 nobody is allowed to start. Only the guides can...and the idea is that they know the route and are therefore faster on the way up. For the others is anyway good to be able to follow the guide because it solves quite a lot of problem of route finding...but you have to be fast!
I'm not going to spend time describing the route...because there are tons of description everywhere. Also it was quite complicated so I will probably not remember it all or make mistakes in the writing. All I can say is that between the hut and the Solvay biwak route finding is quite difficult. For most of the times you zig-zag up on the east face and only in a short section you really climb on the ridge. It's possible to distinguish the "official" route from the "non-official" ones because the official one is a lot more "clean". This means that there are almost no loose rocks (not everywhere), the rocks are clearly scratched by crampons or levigated by several hundreds of hands...and somehow it looks "brighter" than the other many non official routes. Yes because you don't have to stick completely to the normal route to climb it...many variants are possible...BUT...as soon as you go off the normal route the rock quality becomes very bad very quickly. It's all quite loose and the risk of slipping on loose stuff becomes very high. Basically that's the whole problem of this mountain. It's very easy to loose the official route and then it all becomes quite dangerous. The technical difficulties are quite limited. Sometimes a bit exposed and with not much protection but really not difficult at all. Even one of the guide book I have said that, if there is a mountain for which it would be worth to actually hire a guide, that is the Matterhorn.
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| Me on the top!! |
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| View of the ridge towards Italy...no picture of me standing to the cross...I guess that's a good enough motivation to go back up there! |
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| View of the ridge towards Switzerland |
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| Abseiling at the Moosley slabs |
Yet another thing which is a bit tricky is the "rope management"...short rope, long rope...no rope at all. Losing time in changing setting or not being efficient at it means a lot of time is quickly lost. That's in my opinion one of the reasons why this mountain should not be underestimated at all. If you are sure that the weather is good for the entire day (like in our case) you can take it easy...but if you know you have to be down fast then you really can't waste time.
In the most difficult sections, especially after the Solvay, there are fixed ropes. Actually after the shoulder there are lots of them, one after the other. They make things significantly easier...but even those should not be underestimated. A slip while climbing up one of this ropes can still have very bad consequences. Anyway apart from one of them which is really vertical the others are really OK.
Anyway...after approximately 5h 30m we finally reach the top of the Matterhorn! In all honesty, I thought I would have been a lot happier when I got up there. It's not that I was sad but I was just not happy. When I imagined what it could have felt like to climb this mountain I imagined myself crying on the top for joy...but none of this happened. I think I know the reason why I was not happy...and that probably is because I knew that it would have been more dangerous to get down. It was a bit like the same feeling I had at the beginning of my skitouring career. At the top I realized that now I had to ski down, which for me was the tough part. And in fact getting down was tough. We probably, or almost certainly did, overdo it in terms of safety. We took things far too careful and it took us 10 (yes, not joking...) 10 hours to get down the mountain. We also got "lost" a few times and took some time to find the correct route again. I remember that when we got lost the last time on the way down (around 19:00....!!!!!!!!) I just said "fuck the Matterhorn and also Whimper...I just want to get off this fucking mountain!". Sorry for the bad words, but that is really what I said! More than a mountaineering test it was a psychological test, very very annerving. I don't think I was so mentally stressed after any other trip in the mountains in the past. Also the Biancograt was really long and tough, but I was nowhere close to as mentally exhausted as I was when I finished the Matterhorn.
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| Because of the anniversary of the 150 years since first climb, the route was illuminated every evening...quite amazing to see |
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| Nice views in the morning from the hut...basically lots of 4000m summits wherever you look |
All the happiness that I did not feel at the top, came rushing back to me as soon as I touched safe ground after the last fixed rope. I finally knew we did it and we survived it, without anybody's help. It took us a really long time but we did it on our own! And that's all the satisfaction I need! I'm hiding the fact that I did question myself a few times "why are you doing this" especially on the way down. And to be honest I could not give myself a proper answer. I don't think there is a proper answer. It's probably not much different from a drug. It makes you feel better and you need it more and more. You can call it challenge yourself, or maybe climb yourself...and that's for sure true. Or you can say it's the pursuit of happiness...even though it's probably the pursuit of madness :) for some. The sense of satisfaction such things give you...that is probably the best reason for it. You know that you were good enough for it. Sometimes it's the so called category II fun...but it's fun nevertheless. So even though it took so long and the moment I set foot back at the hut I said "no way I will do it again"...now I'm already looking forward to do it once again. Afterall, this is one of the nicest mountain on Earth and it will always be an unmissable call for those who enjoy mountaineering. But now I also need some other objective because the first big tick on my TO-DO list has been taken!
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