Change In Plans

Note: the events in this post are written about in the present tense, but occurred several days ago, and many thousands of kilometers from here

Greetings from Cabane des Vignettes, high in the Swiss Alps. This was the most spectacular day we have had on the Haute Route.

We started relatively late this morning, avoiding the very-early morning scramble of activity at Cabane des Dix.  We still got all of the sights and smells, but were able to stay out of the way (i.e., in bed) as all of the other teams got on their gear and tramped out into the darkness.

Having a little extra rest this morning was very welcome.  I think our bodies are starting to break down from the altitude and the exercise.  I have developed a nasty, bloody blister on my left heel.  We all have sunburnt, swollen faces and split lips.  Drew even has a sunburnt tongue, which is a new one on me.  Apparently he sticks the tip of his tongue out while we are going uphill. 

Not having any fruit or vegetables is creating mild gastric distress, and all of us would like to shower.  Mike, whose years in the Marines accustomed him to deprivation, told us that he had a dream last night about building a shower in his apartment in New York.  He went from hardware store to hardware store, but could not find the right pipes, or taps, or anything.  He woke up feeling frustrated (and dirty).

Rinaldo told us a funny story at breakfast, about being in the Cabane des Dix one morning when the hutkeeper overslept.  Apparently there were 120 hungry skiers stomping their feet, clapping and chanting for their breakfasts.  The hutkeeper did not emerge.  The skiers clustered around the hutkeeper’s bedroom door, and started battering it.  The hutkeeper must have been frightened by all of this (no way he could have slept through it), because he refused to come out.  Eventually, everyone skied away with no breakfast.  The hutkeeper got fired.

We started by skiing down about 150 meters into a big bowl.  From there, we climbed continuously for about four and a half hours.  My “climbing strategy” has gotten brutally simple: stick right behind Rinaldo and try to keep up.  Trudge, trudge, trudge.  He is a machine.

We went up about 900 meters, to a 3,800 meter peak called Pigne d’ Arolla.  I think this is the highest elevation we will reach on our version of the Haute Route.

  From the top, we had amazing views of the Matterhorn to the West and Mont Blanc to the East (the directions are approximate - I was completely disoriented).  It is difficult to describe, but the view from Pigne d’Arolla  felt different in kind from anything we had seen lower down.  The altitude, the morning sun and blue skies, and the truly high mountain peaks made this the most spectacular view we have had.  We have been incredibly lucky with the weather.

For some reason, I felt particularly gratified when a few loads of heliskiers were ferried up the mountain, and their helicopters landed below the point we had climbed up to. Woo hoo!

The summit was very exposed and cold, so we stripped the climbing skins off of our skis quickly, switched the settings on our bindings and boots, and started an amazing 800-meter descent.  Rinaldo kept us far to the left of where the other skiers had gone, so we had fresh, deep powder for most of the way down.  We also had to be more careful about crevasses: we skied past a few that were big enough to swallow an entire school bus.  The deep blue of the glacial ice is ethereal.

Cabane des Vignettes is positioned at the top of a rock needle, with 200-300 meter cliffs on three sides.  It is very dramatic, like the Alpine hideout of bad guys in countless adventure movies.   As we approached it (from above, thankfully), it was not apparent at all how we would get inside.

The secret entrance was around the back side of another rock needle, along a narrow track (don’t look down), and then up a little traverse.  To actually get into the hut, we had to take off our skis and climb an aluminum ladder.  Five days into the trip, none of this seemed terribly remarkable.

Until its recent renovation, Cabane des Vignettes was mostly famous for having an outhouse which was 20 meters away from the hut, across a narrow and icy track.  Ski boots and ice crampons were needed for risky late-night visits.  Although the new toilets are indoors (still no running water), there are still signs on the track out to the outhouse reading, “Be Careful!” and “Do not Pee Here - Go to the WC!”

Tomorrow is the last, and possibly the longest, day.  We will get up early, and do three long climbs, and then ski downhill for twelve kilometers into the village of Zermatt.  This has been an amazing adventure, and I will be sorry when it is over.

Note: this post is written in the present tense, but the events described happened several days ago

Greetings from Cabane des Dix, high in the Swiss Alps. Today was the most exhausting day we have had on the Haute Route. As our guide, Rinaldo, said: “You can go big, or go home.” For reasons that seemed sensible at the time, we decided to go big.

This morning we slept in until 7:00 at Hut de Praefleuri, and had the best breakfast of the trip: muesli and Nutella crepes. I started referring to the saintly hutkeeper woman (gardienne de cabane) who was taking care of 80 skiers by herself as “Notre Dame de Petit Dejeuner”

We skied out of the hut at 8:00, virtually the last people to depart. All of the tracks led to the left, but we had agreed with Rinaldo to “go big.” With some trepidation, we skied off to the right.

Going big meant adding a two-hour summit ascent onto the front end of a full day of skiing. We climbed and climbed through untracked snow, watching the sun paint the tops of the mountains that surrounded us on all sides.

After 90 minutes of trudge, trudge, trudge, Rinaldo pointed up to a broad snow field, and a rounded dome summit. When I asked him the name of the mountain, he said “Mont Sans Nom.” Only much later did I realize (to the amusement of my team mates, I suspect), that Rinaldo had dubbed the summit “Mount No Name.”

As we approached the top, the clouds closed in on us for the first time in the week. Rinaldo got concerned about the weather, and hustled us off the summit as quickly as he could. We have learned that when he says, “Let’s go!” he means now. None of us dallied.

The 30-minute descent (on basically the same terrain we had just climbed) was close to heavenly: light, soft, untracked powder. Jonathan and Drew, in particular, looked absolutely poetic as they carved perfect turns down the slope. I probably looked more like an atonal opera than a poem, but the skiing was amazing.

Halfway down, a minor catastrophe was narrowly avoided. When we stopped to catch our collective breath, I planted my right ski pole, and buried it up to the grip in the deep powder. Somehow the basket at the bottom had come off. With five hours (and three days) of ski touring ahead, skiing with only one functional pole would be practically impossible. While I dug futilely with my avalanche shovel, and Rinaldo grimaced (realizing he would have to lend me his pole, or I wouldn’t make it), Jonathan turned on his skis and started climbing back up the slope, and along a ridge line.

After 10 minutes, Rinaldo, who was still concerned about the weather, said, “Let’s go,” and he started shouting for Jonathan. There was no response. After another anxious five minutes or so, Jonathan returned. He was out of breath, covered in snow, and holding my lost pole basket triumphantly. He had climbed 100 meters through the deep powder in his boots, because he “saw something black in the snow, and what else could it have been?”

As Rinaldo reattached the pole basket, and checked all of my other equipment, he kept saying “On-bee-leevable” over and over. It really was a remarkable rescue effort by Jonathan.

As we continued the descent, Mike casually told me that in the Marines, someone who can’t keep their gear together is referred to as a “soup sandwich.”  I was clearly the soup sandwich of the day

We rejoined the tracks of the other Haute Route skiers on a narrow ledge above a large frozen lake. Rinaldo had mentioned that there was a long traverse before the next climb, and he was right. For four kilometers we skied down the narrow, gently sloping track. My right (uphill) thigh burned, and I tried to maintain concentration, so I didn’t face plant my way off the track and onto the frozen lake below. Several times the track flattened out, and we sweatily double poled, skated, and herringboned our way along. That sounds like more fun than it was. Later, we couldn’t agree whether this was “the traverse from hell,” or “the traverse to hell.” It was definitely a traverse, though, and hell was involved.

We put the climbing skins back on our skis near a pretty waterfall, and started a long gentle ascent. In one of his very few noticeable mistakes, Rinaldo promised a break after 20 minutes of climbing. He must have forgotten, or really been worried about the worsening weather, because we went for two straight hours. Trudge, trudge, trudge.

Even though it was overcast, and snowing, it was very warm. I took off my jacket, my sweater, and my gloves, and skied along in my long-underwear top. We all got a much-needed laugh when Jonathan went one better, and skied for an hour with no shirt on at all.

At long last, Rinaldo paused and pointed out Cabane des Dix, where we would be staying. It was just after 3 pm, and we had been on our skis for over 7 hours. To my great, exhausted, chagrin, the hut was at the top of a steep 150-meter hillock, jutting out of the valley. Collectively we groaned, and started up the hill.

As we saw how the trail climbed upward, Drew shouted, “Kick turn!” in the same tone of voice that a surfer would yell “Shark!”  Zephyr, Drew, and I, the inexperienced ski tourers in the group, steeled ourselves for risk and humiliation on the steep kick turns to come.

As Drew navigated the steepest kick turn on the hill, just ahead of me on the track, his downhill ski started to slip. I shuffled forward, and planted my ski pole to brace him. In my brain-fogged state, I said with alarm, “Your boot is out of your binding. Do you want me to fix it?” In extremis, he had the presence of mind to say, “Of course it is out of the binding. We are ski touring.” To his credit, he did not add the words, “You idiot.” In extremis, all I could think to say in response was, “Duh!”

Very, very tired, we stumbled into the hut and took off our ski boots. Our day of going big was over.

Although we were too late for lunch, Drew somehow convinced the hutkeeper to make us a plate of rosti. We presented the meal of cheese and potatoes to Jonathan, in appreciation of his ski-pole-basket rescue.

“On-bee-leevable” Rinaldo repeated.

Greetings from Zermatt, Switzerland! Today we had the final, and most satisfying day on the Haute Route: the 8-hour trek from Cabane des Vignettes to Zermatt. I will fill in some description of days 4 and 5 in later posts, and will add some pictures once I get back to New Zealand.

This morning we woke up at 5:15 in Cabane des Vignettes. This hut was positioned most dramatically, atop a rock needle, with roughly thousand-foot drops on three sides.

The Boxer divx

Before sunrise we skied down a narrow track next to a sheer drop off (the only time I have been nervous the entire week), and then down into a giant bowl.

By 6:45 am, we had put climbing skins on our skis, and were starting the long ascent toward the first of three high-mountain saddles. Just before we started our climb, a Slovenian group who we had been skiing near, and sharing huts with each night, skied up to us. With our ski poles, we created an “arch of honor,” and chanted “Slovenia! Slovenia!” as they skied past. Just a little gesture toward international skiing friendship and collaboration.

We climbed steadily for about two and a half hours, all of us in line behind Rinaldo, matching his steady, relentless pace. We reached the first saddle next to a giant peak completely covered in snow. It looked like a white sand dune.

We skied down for about 20 minutes, then put skins on again for the second climb. After about 60 minutes of gentle incline, we reached a very steep pitch. Rinaldo suggested that I take off my skis, and hike up in the deep snow. I asked whether I could try to ski up. To my surprise, and great satisfaction, I skied all the way to the top (as did Jonathan). It was probably the biggest feeling of athletic accomplishment since I finished the Comrades Marathon with India in 1998. . Maybe the altitude was getting to me, because I don’t really think this was such a big deal by absolute standards.

After another short downhill, we put the skins on for the final time. The final climb was almost 2 hours, gentle but long. At the top we celebrated briefly, and started the long descent into Zermatt.

We skied in heavy powder for nearly an hour. Some parts were great, some were very difficult. I fell several times, including my only binding release of the trip. . For much of the way, a wide giant slalom track through the slush had been carved by previous skiers, so the trick was to maintain control while sliding through the pre-selected turns.

We skied down 2,000 meters, over a distance of more than 10 kilometers. There was a lot of traversing. Eventually we had to take off our skis, and walk up a muddy access road, before we made it onto the groomed slopes of Zermatt.

We rejoined civilization (and the Zermatt trail system) at a mid-slope restaurant. Dozens of people were relaxing in the afternoon sun, listening to a guitarist perform Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”. Amidst the neatly groomed day skiers we felt wild and rough.

After another 30 minutes of trail skiing, we found ourselves in the center of Zermatt.

The Haute Route trip had come to an end. A safe, happy, exhausted end. After a celebratory Italian dinner, we said goodnight. For many of us, this is also goodbye.

Tomorrow morning, I take a 6:15 am train (with Drew and Jonathan) down to Geneva airport. I am flying to Istanbul for a meeting, and should be there in time for dinner tomorrow night.

The Haute Route has been exhilarating, exhausting, and fun. I don’t know when India and I will get to undertake a similar challenge, but I look forward to that. For now, I am too tired to write any more. I will add detail and color in future postings.

Note: this was written two days ago (April 1), but only posted on April 3. Pictures will follow later.

Greetings from Cabane de Prafleuri, about 10,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps.

Day 3 of the Haute Route ski tour was flat-out awesome. It had everything: a long climb, a beautiful high-mountain summit, and some of the best powder skiing ever.

We were up at 6 am. All of us slept much better than we had the previous night. Being in a room with six beds instead of 26 made a difference. Plus, I think we are all getting acclimatized to the altitude.

After a basic breakfast of bread and coffee, Rinaldo had us out the door before 7. He played an April Fool’s joke by telling each of us that it was raining outside when it was too dark to see (he said “It’s pooking.”) We actually had to stand around for a few minutes on our skis, with climbing skins on, until it got light enough to move safely. The sunlight brushing the tops of the mountains was very pretty.

We climbed continuously for almost five hours. Rinaldo’s skiing style is to move with relentless, metronomic regularity. Every 90 minutes he allows us a 10-minute break, but aside from that, he just keeps moving.

All of us have learned to do what Rinaldo does, and say what Rinaldo says. We followed him closely, like a line of ducklings making their way down to the water. In this case, though, we were making our way up about 800 meters, to the summit of a mountain called Rosablanche.

My French is poor, but I think the mountain’s name translates to ‘white rose’. From the valley at Rosablanche’s base, the snow and the jagged rocks did look a little like a flower’s bloom, so I guess that makes sense.

The ascent never got particularly steep, so there were few opportunities to practice our kick turns. After lots of head-down, trudge, trudge, trudge, though, we were suddenly almost as high as we could go.

We took off our skis and packs, grabbed our ice axes, and scrambled up the last 15 meters to the summit. Just to our left were a group of very unsteady looking cornices - big snow drifts hanging over a several-hundred-foot drop. From above they looked invitingly like secure footing. We stayed on the rocks as much as possible, heeding Rinaldo’s words, “If you are on the cornice when it falls, c’est finis.”
After a few minutes on top of the world, we climbed down (slightly hairier), and put on our skis.  We had a spectacular downhill run through untracked powder. We skied for almost 45 minutes, in snow conditions and terrain that are literally about as good as they can be.

Finally, we reached the hut at about 2:30 in the afternoon. A long and amazing day of skiing.
We have gotten the basic hut routine down. First we all take off skis and boots, and leave boot liners out to dry. Then we put our ice axes into a special holder outside the door. Apparently, it is a big etiquette faux pas to bring an ice axe into the mountain hut. We go up to our bunk room, put on dry clothes, and go out to sit in the sunshine. After a round of waters, usually someone buys a few cans of beer, and we play cards or backgammon, or read. It is a very civilized end to the skiing day.

This hut, Praefleuri, is unusual, because there is only one person working here. A woman slightly older than me, cooking dinner for 80 people, serving snacks and drinks all afternoon, and checking guests into their rooms. She seems to be a miracle worker. Theoretically, she runs the hut with her husband, but he must be off somewhere.

It has been very strange to have this adventure with a group of people who I didn’t know well at the start. As you would expect, we have gotten to know each other a little, and are having an intense shared experience. India and the kids and I have been having an intense, shared experience for the last year (and a wonderful and happy normal life outside of that time). While I am here, they are in New Zealand doing things without me.

There is no way, physically, that we could be having this experience as a family. India, of course, could crush all of us (except Mike the personal trainer), in physical fitness, but she doesn’t like to ski. The whole trip would be inconceivable for small kids.

That said, I continue to feel like they should be here. I miss them. We have been able to talk almost every day, and I have been hearing about their adventures in New Zealand. But I’m far, far away, and they are doing their own thing.

I am very glad that this separation is temporary. I won’t live a life apart from them again, as I did for many years, until May 2008.

Tomorrow will be another big day. We are all feeling good, and have decided to add more climbing and skiing to the route. If tomorrow is even half as good as today, it will be amazing.

Greetings from the Montfort Hut, near Verbier, Switzerland.

Popcorn Porn trailer Day Two of the Haute Route was nowhere near as difficult or dramatic as Day One We started by skiing out the hut door, and down a glacier, descending about 1,500 feet. The snow was a little crusty, and difficult to turn in, but the sunrise over the high mountains was spectacular. We were a little worried about falling in crevasses, but Rinaldo skied in front of us, and pointed them out. The blue ice of the glacier was beautiful and slightly menacing.

We took off our skis at the base of a steep, short pitch, and scrambled up in our ski boots. From the other side of the couloir, Col des Ecandis, we could see about 6 linear kilometers down a valley called Val d’Arpette. The valley dropped 4,500 feet vertically into a small town called Champex.

The descent took about 90 minutes. For some shady parts, the snow was powdery, and the skiing was out of this world. Most of the way, though, the powder had frozen into a little crust, and it was difficult for me to make turns. With my pack and skis, I weigh about 260 pounds, so it was hard to not break through the crust and catch a ski edge. The better skiers in our group still made it look easy. Mike and Jonathan, carving turns gracefully on their telemark skis, were a skiing vision from a bygone era.

Once we got down below about 7,000 feet, the snow got slushy, and it was fun to ski. We schussed through a pine forest, listening to the birdsong. Finally we made it to the village of Champex, and met up with our taxi.

It was definitely strange to have part of our high mountain adventure assisted by automobile. This is why the Verbier Route is considered “more skier friendly” than the traditional Haute Route.

We drove about 25 minutes, down, down, down to the valley floor. From there, we took a gondola up to the village of Verbier. We had a weird lunch at a surf-themed restaurant, and then rode two gondolas to the top of Montfort Glacier. We skied down a long way on groomed trails in the afternoon sun. We took yet another lift, and then had a final downhill run to the Montfort Hut.

This hut is a considerably more luxurious than last night’s: six bunks per room instead of 26, running water, a nice terrace. Right now, Drew, Jonathan and I are having a three-way backgammon tournament in the early-evening sun.

So today, we had no climbing skins, no crampons, no kick turns, and no rappelling. Rinaldo has assured us that tomorrow will be a much harder day. We will start with a two-hour climb right out the hut door. Not dangerous or steep, but the beginning of a long and interesting day.

Greetings from Cabane du Trient, on the Haute Route. We are about 10,500 feet above sea level. We had an exhausting, exhilarating, amazing first day of ski touring.

We left the hotel in Chamonix on schedule at 8, trying to catch the first lift of the morning at Grands Montet. We took two cable cars in succession, climbing from about 5,000 feet to 11,000 feet in 30 minutes, stopping at the top of Argentiere Glacier. We broke through the cloud cover at about 9,000 feet, and had spectacular views of rocky peaks in all directions.

From the top, we skied downhill for a solid 30 minutes. It was great: fresh powder, blue sky and sun, and a very easy, long descent. As we enjoyed it, one member of our group, Drew, pointed toward a huge face at the other side of the valley - the Col du Chardonnet. I could see tiny ants, 2-3 kilometers off, climbing slowly, slowly.

We put on the climbing skins, switched our bindings over to the touring (unattached heel), and started skiing slowly across the level terrain in the saddle between the two peaks. After an hour, we reached the first steep face, and then the character building began.

Skiing up steep hills requires about 10 meters of trudge, trudge, trudge, up a narrow switchback track, followed by an elaborate maneuver called a kick turn. Then trudge, trudge, trudge in the other direction. The kick turn, incidentally, first requires doing a ballerina’s plie, then a vicious donkey kick with the formerly downhill ski, to get the skis parallel again, but with the tips facing in the opposite direction. When a skilled skier does it, it looks easy and graceful.

We had practiced this technique for about 15 minutes yesterday, on a gentle slope. I felt confident, almost cocky, as we started up the Col du Chardonnet. The fact that people above me on the 40-degree slope were struggling, and sliding back, and swearing in a variety of languages, should have been a hint that this is not so easy. “Amateurs!” I thought.

Of course, our own ascent of the Col du Chardonnet was a complete horror show. No one fell, and no one got hurt, but it was a sweaty, moderately frightening, physically grueling two hours. At one point, Drew said, “You and I are breathing so hard we sound like a gay porno movie.”

Graceful or not, all five of us, plus Rinaldo our guide, eventually made it past the extremely steep initial pitch, through a long sloping meadow, and then up another steep bit to the top.

From there, we had to put on all of our warm gear (suddenly very cold and windy), put on boot crampons, and lash our skis to our packs. Then, one by one, Rinaldo attached a rope to our climbing harnesses, and lowered us down a near-vertical 200-foot cliff, and into Switzerland. Even trusting him, and trusting the equipment, it was intense.

We had another long, spectacularly beautiful, downhill run, and then started another 2-hour trudge, trudge, trudge climb. My “system” was to take 80 strides, then stop and rest for ten deep breaths. Repeat a few hundred times.

The last climb of the day was called Fenetre du Salleina, the window to the Salleina glacier. It was not as long as the Col du Chardonnet, but it was slightly steeper. After making several (slightly improved) kick turns, most of us had to take off our skis, and scramble on hand and foot to the top. I tried not to think about leaning too far backwards, and falling 300 feet.

One member of our group, Jonathan, kept his skis on and kick turned all the way to the top. He is much better at this than I am.

Another hour of skiing from the Fenetre, and we arrived, bone-tired at this hut. We basically hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in the 9 hours since breakfast, so it was a relief to have bottles of mineral water, and a huge spaghetti dinner.

The hut is very rustic: four bunk rooms with 25 beds each, no washing facilities, chemical toilets, limited electricity. But it’s home for now, and a welcome home at that.

Today was the longest and toughest day of the trip (I think). The Haute Route is definitely living up to its reputation for beauty and for physical challenge. Onward and upward.