Crossing the Alps | Part 1

How it all started

The story begins about a year ago, when Hugo and I met on Svalbard. Both trying to escape the dry university schedules back home, we landed all the way up north on this island in the Arctic, me studying Glaciology, and Snow Science, and Hugo taking guiding courses. We soon became close skiing buddies and, when parting ways in July, after a season full of adventures, decided to plan something for the next winter. We knew we would both be back in the Alps, and were drawn to some sort of self-supported ski traverse. I had a one-week trip in mind, but when Hugo called me in August, saying that he had managed to get two months off of University, we both knew that this was about to get a hell of a lot bigger than anticipated. We started to brainstorm and hyped each other up into planning a traverse of the entire Swiss Alps. This made sense to us, since I grew up in the German Alps close to Innsbruck, and Hugo in Grenoble, so traversing from Austria to France would feel like a full circle moment, connecting our two home regions, but at that point the both of us were quite far from grasping the sheer size of the project. After an extensive planning period all autumn (more on this in part 3 of this series), on the first of February we found ourselves with a 26- and 29-kg backpack, respectively (40-50% of our body weight), taking a bus out of Innsbruck to start our journey further up the valley.

We were very stressed from the start in Austria. This was undoubtedly the biggest adventure the two of us had ever attempted. Despite our best efforts to prepare both the logistics and our bodies, actually having the full weight of our backpacks on for the first time had both of us in doubt if what we had planned would actually work out. Two months of winter camping, challenging the mountains, route finding and making wise avalanche decisions out there seemed quite daunting, especially with our rather limited multi-day skitouring experience. From me being used to a one-day pack and snowmobiling to the base of the mountain and Hugo being used to haul everything in a pulka, to then suddenly having to carry 4 days of food, a tent and sleeping bags as well as loads of heavy gear for the more technical glaciated sections, was quite something to get used to. On top of that, we had the idea of documenting it all for a film, which neither of us had loads of experience with either. Luckily for us, we had Matteo and his calm and funny attitude, with us for the first week. We had met him in Svalbard and his demeanor really helped with calming some of our nerves.

Tired and worried about how to safely get back onto our track, we ended up in the Vernagthütte winter room. In there, we got lucky, meeting Eva and Max, who were also out on a skiing trip and knew the region enough to help us make an alternative plan of how to get down to the Langtauferer valley, immediately boosting the mood of all three of us! On top of that, the next day, we were blessed with beautiful weather and decided to tackle the way down to the valley in two shorter days, sleeping at the Brandenburger Haus instead of pushing for one big day. That way, we had plenty of time to enjoy the stunning views from the glacier plateau, and the sorrow of our last day was quickly forgotten. It almost felt like the previous day’s struggles had just been there to amplify our sense of relief and bliss, now that everything was going smoothly again. With a big smile and a touch of sunburn on our faces, we arrived at the hut and even had time to climb the small peak behind it, taking in an unforgettable sunset from the top.

The next day, we topped out at the Weißseespitze at 3532 meters and made our way down into the valley. After bootpacking down a steep rocky ridge, and skiing out the horrible crusty snow, we unfortunately already had to say goodbye to Matteo, who took a train back home to France from here.

Hugo and I stayed down in the Inn-valley at the place of a couple we had contacted ahead of time. We started to think about our next section and soon ran into a problem. We didn't feel comfortable with the route we had originally planned, going over the Jamtalferner and Silvrettagletscher. Being only a rope team of two and having seen the glaciers still quite poorly filled in this early in the season, we decided that we didn't want to take the risk, and we would instead take the non-glacier path over the Vereinapass to get to Klosters. But the weather was expected to get worse over the next couple of days, so we would have to make quick progress to get out of the mountains before a storm would hit the region.

Fiasco on the Vereinapass

But then disaster struck! With me feeling a bit sick the first day, we didn't get far enough to find a good campsite and had to settle for the widest part of the valley we could reach. We were trusting the weather forecast, which predicted a clear night with negative temperatures. But around midnight, we woke up to rain falling on the tent. The little comfort we had was gone, leaving room for fear, as we both understood that this meant the snow above us could soak through and cause a wet snow avalanche that would bury us alive! We began to check the consistency of the precipitation regularly, and from that point it became impossible for either of us to go back to sleep. At one point, Hugo actually jumped up shouting "Linus avalanche!" as his tired brain had mistaken the sound of a plane for that of an avalanche. As the precipitation slowly developed into solid snowflakes around 3 am, we decided to stay the night and get up early the next morning before the sun would hit the freshly loaded and already somewhat wet slope. But having had so little sleep to recover from the onset of my illness, I felt terrible the next day. Hugo’s stomach wasn’t doing any better, and together we slogged down the mountain, dragging ourselves and the big rucksacks toward the valley. We were so exhausted and desperate that a simple fall could make us tear up, but at the same time, seeing each other in the same comically pitiful state kept making us burst out laughing at ourselves every now and then!

Part 2 of this series will tell the story of this second attempt.

Our trip was supported by Dynafit and Alpenheat. A big “Thank You” goes out for their help and especially their belief in our project from very early on. If you’re interested in the film about our journey, which will come out next spring, feel free to follow our instagram channels to get all the news @linus.langenbacher and @hugo.stephen