Allalinhorn ENE ridge (20.08.2014)  

After our ascent of the Gran Paradiso North Face we descended back down to the valley from the Chabod hut in fog and rain showers and took a coffee break at the cafe at Pont. While here we had a browse through the guide books, got an updated weather forecast and thought over our options for the rest of the week. There seemed to be a bit of unstable weather until thursday, but friday looked to be a good day. After much discussion and suggestions, we made a plan to drive to Saas Grund and have a base there for the next two nights, and one night at the Almageller hut, which was more or less within the same area.

So we made the long(ish) drive back from Italy over the St. Bernards Pass into Switzerland again and eastwards along the Rhone valley towards the Saas valley. To break up the journey a bit we stopped at a Coop to buy some lunch supplies for the next few days and had a picnic at Dorenaz. This also happens to be a genius place to eat lunch since there are roadside crags to climb here (the routes are bolted). We spent around two hours at Dorenaz climbing routes between french grade 5a to 6a before continuing the journey to Saas Grund.

The plan was to ascend the Allalinhorn via its east-north-east ridge, sometimes known as the Hohlaubgrat. I’d already been up the Allalinhorn before in 2002, but since I had only vague memories from that trip I wasn’t so bothered about going up it again, and at least this time it would be a different route up. We were planning to use the first lift up to Felskinn station leaving at 6.15am from Saas Fee. So it was a 5am breakfast followed by a short drive up to Saas Fee and a short walk to the cable car station. It was still dark when we queued up to get tickets but it was light enough to realise that the sky was overcast and the cloud level was low. A little disappointing. Nevertheless it was still early and we would be ascending up to around 3300m, so I held out hope that it was only valley cloud hanging over us and that the mountain tops would be bathing in sunshine. This actually turned out to be surprisingly accurate.

After changing lifts once and getting off at the intermediate train station (which was literally a hole in the middle of the ridge), it was some time around 7.30am before we put on climbing gear and roped up to walk across the Hohlaub glacier. It was a gorgeous day above the cloud level and the glacier snow was satisfyingly crunchy to walk on. There were a few crevasses around but we rarely came close to any large ones. The start of the Hohlaubgrat was just over the other side the glacier. While walking across we got a good view of the lower part of the ridge, which was basically a gently-angled snow slope and didn’t look very interesting …… at least the fantastic views made up for the lack of excitingness so far.

Apart from our group, there was a party of three nearby and a couple of other climbers slightly ahead, but no one else. It seemed so quiet! There was little wind and plenty of sunshine too, so the temperature was comfortable enough to not need more than a thin jacet over my base layer top. Feeling much better acclimatised today, the ascent of the lower section of the Hohlaubgrat felt like a walk in the park. I wondered whether it would have been more efficient to do that part of the ridge unroped, since it wasn’t at all steep and there weren’t any crevasses in sight. Fortunately the ridge didn’t remain so boring the whole time, and after ascending to a sort of subsidiary top on the ridge, we had the more interesting part of the route ahead of us.

We took a quick stop here for some snacks and to appreciate the views of the Strahlhorn and Rimpfischhorn to the left of the ridge. There wasn’t a huge amount of height to climb from here now, and the ’crux’ of the route – a rocky step in the ridge was well within our sight. The approach to the foot of the scramble was very scenic and felt atmospheric, even though the ridge itself was still quite roomy and not particularly exposed. The initial part of the rocky step involved quite straightforward scrambling (we kept crampons on), although the guides chose to secure us while we climbed up. I think there was a bolt at one of the rocks a few metres after the first section, which makes it fast to set up a quick belay if necessary.

Fortunately both the rock was dry and the snow in-between was solid, so it was relatively easily to climb up wearing gloves. Some people chose to keep the ice axe in reach, but most of the time it wasn't necessary since there were plenty of rocks to use as handholds. After about 20-30 more metres of easy scrambling/moving over mixed rock and snow terrain, we arrived at the last stretch of snow ridge leading up to the summit. While waiting for the guys to catch up we waited at the eastern end of the ridge since there was a fairly sizeable crowd of people on the top. Most of them had come up the normal route from the Mittel Allalin station, so it was satisfying to know we’d avoided so many people by coming up the Hohlaubgrat!

On the summit we spent a lot of time taking photos since it was still reasonably early in the day and we weren’t in a huge rush to get down to the Mittel Allalin station. I took the opportunity to enjoy the wind-free, warm conditions on the north-eastern side of the summit by flaunting a bit of arctic tan (acquired of course from the unbelievable summer of 2014!) which for some reason attracted some attention from other climbers on the summit. After the mass photo session we headed back down the normal route, enjoying the views of the Monte Rosa massif, Matterhorn and Dent Blanche (amongst many other peaks) in front of us. The snow was still in perfect condition, so the descent went super-quickly and super-easily.

There was a little more wind on this side of the mountain anyway, so we walked down to the col (Feejoch) before stopping for a picnic lunch at around 11.30am and enjoyed some very tasty bread with ham and peaches. From there it was an easy-angled descent around the northwest-facing slopes of the mountain to get to the Mittel Allalin. The snow became a bit wetter and stickier along the way, but it was not the kind of slush I remember from 12 years ago when we’d had much warmer weather!

Summer skiers cruising at high speed around the pistes made us all feel rather jealous as we approached the station, but that was probably the most interesting sight on the walk down. It took in the region of half an hour from the Feejoch to get there and even though there were some people going 'solo' we stayed roped up for most of the way back since there were still several crevasses around (significantly more on the technically-easier normal route than on the Hohlaubgrat).

To waste a bit of time we enjoyed some coffee at the restaurant before lazily taking the train and lifts all the way back down to Saas Fee. In short; a nice alpine walk with terrific views – but doing this after having ascended the north face of the Gran Paradiso seemed comparitively dull. The trip gets five stars for superb weather and views alone.