Crossing the Alps Part 2 | All good things come in twos

It was a bit weird to take the train from Heidelberg back to Switzerland. In Part 1, you can find out what happened beforehand and why I'm returning from Heidelberg. Already being fully dressed in skiing gear, a couple of people asked me what I was actually up to. And honestly, I didn’t really know either. The abrupt break in our journey and spending one week feeling sick and reading on the couch actually kind of killed the hype I had had. But as the train slowly moved into the higher mountains and I got to see both the snow cover and Hugos smile getting bigger and bigger, I knew what I was here for again.

This time, however, we both weren't keen on giving the Vereinapass another shot and therefore decided to directly take the Flüelapass over to Davos. Since we didn't plan to cross any glaciers until the last two weeks on the Haute-Route, we made the call to leave the glacier rescue kit and some other more technical gear at home, saving a couple kilos each. This made all the difference, and now being down to about 21 and 24 kg, we were able to progress a lot faster.

The weather blessed us with some awesome powder on the way to Davos, and after only two days out in the snow, both of us were fully committed to the journey again. After a night in Davos that we spent with some lovely hosts, we headed over to Arosa, but since at this point, it had been dumping snow for 3 days and we didn't have a safe way of proceeding from there, we decided to stay slightly above town and enjoy the powder for some days.

Initially, the idea had been to keep ongoing west for the next section, crossing the Greina plateau, and ending up in Disentis, but the weather forecast kept on looking really uninviting. With 140 cm of fresh snow and wind gusts of up to 150 km/h forecasted, we decided to not head into what felt like a death trap to us and rather wait out the rest of the storm at Hugo's sister's place in Lugano. 3 days later, with the avalanche forecast still up at a 4 and no signs of the snow settling any time soon, with a heavy heart we decided to skip that section and keep on going from Disentis, where we could stick to the slopes for the next couple of days until we felt like the avalanche situation was manageable again.

We crossed the Oberalppass, and slalomed between the tourists on the descent into Andermatt. After refueling in town, we were headed towards the Furkapass and out of civilization again. At this point, we had both put up and taken down the tent often enough with freezing fingers to look for other options in the evening. We ended up spending one night in a transformer house entrance and one in an empty goat shed, both valid choices but not without disadvantages. We managed to air out the goat smell of our sleeping bags and headed up to the Furkapass. The first day was very slow progress, climbing in complete whiteout, navigating 10 steps at a time with the GPS-Watch, but we got luckier with the weather after that! For the next few days, our main worry was avoiding getting sunburned, which we managed decently well, and we had an awesome and rather technical day over to the Tällistock.

It was the first day that we felt like we actually had to evaluate the slopes we were exposing ourselves to, by digging snow pits, and belaying each other into the more spicy sections. For the most part, up to that point we had always picked a route that was either clearly not exposing us to significant risk or we felt sketched out by the entire situation and stayed in a safe spot in the valley or in bounds. It felt good to gather information and make well-thought-through decisions for the two of us, but it also made us thankful to have had such safe and easy avalanche conditions where we didn't have to put this effort in more regularly.

Up above the Rhône valley, we spent our coldest night at -22°C, both tightly holding onto the Nalgene bottles we had filled with hot water. It’s surprising how cozy a warm sleeping bag can actually be, despite the -15°C that we recorded in our tent. The cold night caught up to us when we tackled the descent early the next morning, though. It was described to us as a beautiful, mellow 1400m descent, but with the mixture of warm sunny days and freezing cold nights, it had turned into a sun-crusted hell, and both Hugo and I were struggling to stay upright on every single turn. At this point, we had both gotten the hang of descending with the big backpacks and usually enjoyed the downhill quite a lot, but that day we were both happy to have made it down with ice-cold toes, but at least without serious injury.

3 Days with an old friend

We were able to reheat the frostbitten toes in the train, because Kyle, a friend of ours from North America, had some time off before his work in Austria started, and we decided to meet halfway, and ski together for the weekend. The idea was to meet somewhere between Thusis and Disentis, and that way redo a part of the section we had skipped earlier. But again, the weather was not very welcoming. Getting pushed over by the gusts reaching up to 120 km/h, we were reminisced of some of the skiing we had done up on Svalbard together. After a desperate attempt at trying to find a couloir or something remotely sheltered, we gave up and just spent a nice evening in a hut, chatting until late at night.

After Kyle had left, we took the train over to Brig, where two lovely climbers had invited us to stay at their place. Having reached one week without a shower or washing machine, it was a great feeling to arrive somewhere and get ourselves back to endurable smell levels. On top of that, it was also great to have a couple of days to prepare for the upcoming week, the "Haute-Route des Alpes" from Zermatt to Chamonix, probably the most renowned ski traverse in Europe. We were able to retrieve our glacier gear from the post office, stock up on sunscreen and snacks, and most importantly, get in touch with some local guides and get up-to-date information on the condition out on the glaciers. Also, to compensate for the extra weight, we decided to leave the tent behind and instead make use of the extensive hut system out on the Haute-Route.

To both of our consternation, just two days before we had identified a nice weather window, a group of six people training for the "patrouille des glaciers" ended up in a storm and died on our exact route. This definitely was a reminder of the danger inherent in the high alpine terrain and for sure made us reconsider if we were prepared enough. We came to the conclusion that we were in a very different situation than that group had been, since we were going out in quite the opposite fashion of a fast “skimo traverse”, and with the weather window looking better and better as we came closer to it, we felt confident to tackle this last and most difficult part of our journey.

The next day, we started with a slight headache, and a good bit later than we had planned, but somehow despite all this, fueled by Raclette, we were running up the mountain like on no other day, and even though we only made it out of the ski resort around noon, a couple of hours later we found ourselves at the bottom of one last climb up a steep couloir, to reach the "bivouac igloo des pantalons blancs", our hut for the night. We arrived right at sunset and took in the majestic view all the way from the Matterhorn to the Massif du Mont Blanc as well as we could, since we knew the weather was looking pretty grim for the next two days. For that same reason, the next day we just headed out for a small mission, skiing some couloirs and steeper small scale slopes that had caught our interest the day before.

When heading down the slope into the valley below the day after, we got really stoked about the good snow in the upper half of the 1800 m drop, but as we reached the lower slopes, the snow had gotten rained on the day before, and where snow was left, it had pretty much turned to ice. We half-slipped, half hiked down and were really happy when we finally reached a bus stop in Lourtier. With only a couple of days left for the project, we took a bus over to Champex to start our very last section to Chamonix from there.

Chamonix!!!

The last big ascent from Champex to the Plateau du Trient had us both reminisce about the last 7 weeks that we spent out on this trip together. What a project we had now managed to accomplish. We had gone from not thinking this trip was possible when first lifting our backpacks to enjoying the view in the incredible Massif du Mont Blanc, knowing we would finish the 2-month journey that day. As much as we had planned and prepared for this trip, before getting onto our skis, it always felt a little too big, too ambitious and too many uncertainties seemed to be in the way for us to confidently say we would end up in Chamonix. To suddenly (and that's what it felt like) be standing on top of the Col de Chardonnet, one last descent over the glacier de l'Argentière away from our final destination was quite intense for the both of us.

On the one hand, of course, there was the pure joy of "having done it" of having managed to realize this crazy idea of ours, of having proven ourselves right in being ambitious. On the other hand, in spending this much time out there, we had gotten quite used to this rhythm, and both of us were scared and somewhat reluctant to head back into the civilized world and fit into our usual full-time schedule again.