| Breithorn: North ridge Trip Report |
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| Breithorn: North ridge   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Italy/Switzerland, Europe Lat/Lon: 45.94150°N / 7.74670°E Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 30, 1997 | Page By: tor Created/Edited: Apr 2, 2003 / Object ID: 168874 Hits: 1171 Loading... Page Score: 82.46% - 1 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Breithorn (4165m) -- Arete du Trifti (North ridge)
AD -- about 1300m from Gandegg hut and glacier -- 8 hrs estimated
“Mixed; rock II to III and ice to 55 deg. -- large scale classic ridge”
7/30 -- 7/31/97 Susan & Tor
Got to Zermatt around 4pm (again) and caught the 5pm telepherique up to the Gandegg hut. There were some high clouds but the forecast was good for the next day. We ate dinner and then went to bed early again. This time we were sharing a room with four older (40’s) Germans. They were planning to walk from the hut up the Breithorn by the normal route to acclimatize -- that sounded like a pretty harsh way to do so -- the normal route now goes up ski slopes next to the Klein Matterhorn and then around and behind to ascend the south west ridge of the Breithorn. The whole thing is covered with ski lifts and groomed slopes.
The night started fine but then the others arrived in the room -- we have never heard noises like that come from human beings. One of them sounded like he was throwing up all night long. Another would take two normal breathes, two light snores, two medium snores, two load snores, and then 50 snores that would have busted the windows had they been closed. Susan and Tor slept (or tried to) with their pile jackets and extra pillows wrapped around their heads.
There was so much noise going on that we missed our alarm clock at 2:30am which we noticed at 3am. We hurriedly got up and when downstairs to breakfast. There was another party (a father and son) started for the same route who also got up at 3am. They had not spoken a word to us when they arrived and did not throughout breakfast despite our attempts to be at least slightly civil.
We started out again (just ahead of the other party) in our sneakers to get down to the glacier, where we put on our boots and roped up. Susan used crampons while Tor did not for the start. The father and son passed us while roping up but we passed them again walking across the glacier -- they still had not spoken to us. We traversed down around some rock outcroppings and through some seracs using headlamps until we could easily traverse across to the based of the route. Then we started up easy snow with a couple of short steeper sections (50 degrees maybe) using mostly an axe and a ski pole. Got up the edge of the Trifti ridge where the incline steepened and saw that the others had taken a more direct route and where right behind us again -- still no communication - wow!
We front-pointed up a couple of slopes and then got up to a large plateau below the main peak. There were two basic options: go left and thread through some seracs to arrive on the saddle between the east and west peaks or go right and the climb the mixed snow, ice, and rock to arrive at the top of the west peak. We chose the later but then rather than follow a couple of relatively clean (although steeper) snow and ice couloirs, we chose to follow the tracks which wandered through more mixed terrain. From the bottom it had looked like two or three pitches would yield the summit. We started simu-climbing, separated by the full rope length and placing the occasional ice screw or slinging rock horns (we had not brought any rock gear for the climb). The climbing turned out to be much longer and more intricate than we expected. Tor would lead, placing almost all the gear while simu-climbing, and then set up a belay and collect all the gear from Susan again. We did this twice before summitting; the belays were probably 150 to 200 meters apart. The route zigzagged up the face, following snow gullies between rock bands. It was a really good route.
We summitted around 10:15 (less than 7 hours) to meet a crowd of people who had come up the standard route from the Klein Matterhorn. The other party summitted a few minutes behind us -- still did not speak to us -- I wonder what incredibly offensive thing we must have done or said in German that freaked them out so much! The descent was extremely fast and easy (down 300 meters on easy snow along the ski area to the telepherique) except Susan really had to go to the bathroom which added some urgency!
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Monte Rosa group
