Article Ascent to Alphubel

Skis, belts, glacier equipment, avalanche backpacks. You leave the children in the care of grandparents (capable and still active skiers) – to the delight of both parties, it is a matter of guarding the spawn so that it does not ride too fast on the piste. Unfortunately, the first cable car from Saas-Fee does not run until eight-thirty, but it takes us to a height of 2870 m. No, we really haven't won and we don't have it for free at all, we have to walk 1,400 meters. It will be quite a struggle for time. We need to come back before dark, which is at four this time of year.

Four Wallisian four-thousanders in yet another shot. Photographed the day before from the Mittelallain metro station 3500 m.

The weather couldn't get any better, it's supposed to be clear all day, even the avalanche forecast has dropped to level 2. We turn off the piste onto the glacier and connect to the rope. We need to stick along the rock, which we call pants according to the floor plan, there are no traces anywhere, which is quite a disadvantage, because we will have to look at the map all the more. We climb up and head directly under the menacing-looking seracs, cracks are everywhere and hold us back a lot. Roughly from elevation 3300, the ascent is steeper, we put harshayns on the skis (these are such cats under the skis that turn on under the bindings) and we evaluate as a team that we have acquired them for the equipment, because they climb much better with them.

This crack, for example, has a hole in the middle, such as an eye, which can not only look at the sun in the background if you walk directly along the snow bridge, but also the rising Allalinhorn (4,027 m.)

Alphubel (4,206 m.) Is a relatively accessible four thousandth, it is the snow „bay“ in the distance and from this place there are about eight hundred meters of altitude left.

It is one o'clock in the afternoon, we have climbed almost a thousand meters, but there are still four hundred in front of us. We already know we won't make it. It's time to turn back. The wind is rising and we have a rather unpleasant descent in the rope team on skis. We don't even think about taking off our belts and driving off on our own, on the one hand there is clean ice in places, so we don't even take off the harshais, and on the other hand there are so many cracks that we just don't dare. … And so the three skiers, who thought they were going to descend a lot, set out on a disgraceful journey downstairs consisting of plowing, the occasional jam, when the harshais bit into the ice and wanting to keep the spacing coordinated so that the rope was not too loose (and it was not entirely in everything – in the bindings, in the wands, around the legs …), or too tense, which is even worse. We had a potato salad anyway – we unpacked it from our backpack in a rather unpleasant gust of wind, because style is a must! An expedition full of shouts „MOMENT, NETAHEJ, NETAHEEEJ!“ it was still an excellent and unifying ride.

No. It's there to keep a backpack on your back when the airbag fires … The terrible irons on the sides are harsh, no one wanted to clean them when they reached the piste.