Jegigrat (12.08.2015)

Final proper climb for this holiday. I’d had a few quiet days in Zermatt while there was thundery wet weather going and we had a quick chat after the weekend to plan where we would head next. Initially we’d thought to finish off with a relatively big objective – the east ridge on the Weisshorn – but after hearing that new snow had been dumped down to at least 3300m as a result of the bad weather it didn’t sound like there would be ideal conditions for doing that route. The visibility in Zermatt was still not good enough to allow for any mountains to be visible so it was difficult to evaluate the conditions up high. So instead our final objective ended up being the Jegigrat, a ridge connecting the Jegihorn and Fletschhorn a little north of the Weissmies hut. The highest top on the ridge was only around 3450m so we counted on the ridge being snow-free and in nice condition to do a traverse of. The plan was to meet up in Stalden on the Tuesday and Rocio would drive us to Saas Grund where we could take the Hohsaas lift up and save a long walk-in. It was a pretty warm day again when we arrived in the Saas valley, so this at least would be good for melting off any remaining snow if there was any on the Jegigrat. It didn’t take long to drive there and we got there early in the afternoon. Fortunately it was a little bit cloudier as we ascended on the lift and quite a pleasant temperature to walk ½ hour down to the Weissmies hut.

I felt like the few days rest in Zermatt had set me into a proper holiday-mode now and I couldn’t stop yawning all the way to the hut. Dangerous to relax on holiday?(!) After registering at the hut and having a much-needed dose of caffeine, we set out towards the Jegihorn with a plan to climb a route called Alpendurst which was graded 4c and consisted of 15 pitches, the majority of which were 25-30m long. By the time we’d done the ca. 45-minute walk from the hut to the start of the climb it was around 3.00pm, so we didn’t have a whole of time to get the whole route done and walk back before dinner – but we planned on getting as far as possible with the time we had. It was pleasant climbing. For the first four pitches we’d manage to complete each pitch within about 10 minutes, a pace we needed to maintain for all 15 pitches, if we wanted to get the whole thing done and have enough time to walk off and back down to the hut in time for dinner at 6.30pm. But after finishing the 6th we decided to prioritise dinner and in the end concluded that we could do the whole route another time. We got down in good time before dinner. Kenny, another aspirant guide and friend of Rocio was also joining us there and turned up not long after us. The standard hut dinner was pretty OK even though the hut guardians seemed to have some odd policy about serving tap water. Bed at around 8.30-9pm as usual with a 4am breakfast the next morning. Slept surprisingly well again.

Alarms started ringing at around 3.45am so it was time to get up and eat some breakfast. Bread and cereal and good quantities of coffee (with what tasted like real milk) were consumed at a more leisurely pace this morning since we weren’t in a huge rush. Left the hut at around 4.45am and followed the same path towards the Jegihorn as we’d used the previous afternoon. The only difference this morning was that we continued along the moraine ridge in a northeasterly direction across the Tälligletscher towards the foot of an obvious pillar formation. There were actually two alternative routes for accessing the start of the ridge; the simplest was to use the via ferrata and walk along the crest of the ridge to the start of the route proper, or use the original route described in the guidebook by climbing this pillar thing. Less time spent on the ridge crest itself but would require some thought in route finding. I was personally more interested in using the straightforward option of the via ferrata but in the end we settled for the original guidebook route since Rocio and Kenny were quite keen on practicing their route-finding skills.

We arrived quite early at the end of the moraine ridge and it was still fairly dark so we spent some time waiting here until it began to be lighter and easier to see where we were headed. The initial ascent towards the start of the climbing involved a lot of loose rock and wasn’t particularly fun but fortunately it was a short-lived nightmare and we roped up once we’d got to a sort of ledge feature. Traversed round a rocky vegetated-rock scrambling before eventually arriving at some slabs, above which was a kind of terrace leading us further to the right and upwards. It was easy climbing and by now there were some nice sunrise colours in the sky. But no sun yet. Rocio led this pitch and the next which was mainly an easy scramble following the ridge feature upwards toward the gully we could see above and to the right of us. Kenny took over from there and led the next 4-5 pitches which consisted mainly of traversing into the gully and climbing up the gully (which was not particularly easy to protect), eventually taking an exit to the right when we approached the top of the gully formation. From there it was only a short pitch or two with easy climbing to get to the crest of the ridge where we finally got some sunshine and some good views towards the Mischabel range. Had felt like an eternity without sunshine up until that point!

We took a little break here before continuing to walk along the ridge for a bit. There wasn’t a lot of walking before we met the first of many time-consuming moves along the traverse. A downclimb. It wasn’t a long downclimb, probably only 10-15m in height at most but still steep enough that we had to turn in towards the wall to do it. I’m neither fond of nor good at climbing down while facing in, so it took some time to feel around for the hand and footholds. Rocio went down first with a few metres space between us on the rope while Kenny protected us from above so she was able to tip me on where the holds were after she was finished. Useful to be in the middle :) From there we climbed along the crest of the ridge, there were a good deal of ups/downs and hand traverses across knife-thin slabs. Technically not very difficult but for the first time in a long time I did get the feeling of being a bit exposed and thoughts of ‘you can’t slip here’ passed through my mind a fair number of times throughout the course of the day. The next descent came in the form of a lower/abseil to get down a fairly featureless pinnacle and back onto the ridge again. Rocio also got a taste of being lowered (quote: ‘I don’t like being lowered’ – now she knows why I complain about being lowered!), after which it was my turn next. More traversing followed before an abseil and some delicate weaving around some obstacles on the ridge. Then some more straightforward climbing to get to the Jegiturm, the highest point along the Jegigrat. By now it was about 10.30am, over 5 hours since we’d left the hut.

From here we got not only a fairly good view of the Fletschhorn and also spotted two other climbers on the Grand Gendarme. They’d obviously chosen to do the traverse in the opposite direction and would no doubt end up having a long day if they were only starting the traverse now….. There was a small descent and some more hand-traversing from the Jegiturm before we reached the start of the final ascent to the Grand Gendarme. The exposed hand traverses had seemed like a lot of good fun at the start of the ridge traverse but I noticed now that I wasn’t enjoying them all that much anymore. More like looking forward to begin finished with them. Perhaps I was beginning to be mentally tired from having to concentrate the whole time? Just before setting off on the next pitch up to the top of the Grand Gendarme we met the two other climbers who were still in the process of abseiling down. Rocio, being pretty fluent in French, managed to get some helpful tips from them for finding the point where we should exit from the ridge to the glacier since they’d come up that way. Apparently we were supposed to look out for the second major gully after abseiling off the Grand Gendarme which was useful to know. The climbing up to the top of the Grand Gendarme was fairly straightforward and gave no hints about what a fantastic feature it actually is. It was only after we’d reached the top and looked over the other side that I got to appreciate the steepness of the top. It was a fairly direct drop down the other side! Or I may have perceived it to be more exposed now since my concentration was starting to slip. Rocio abseiled down first, reaching another abseil post around halfway down the Gendarme. I followed on, trying to keep a fairly direct line and steer myself down to where Rocio was clipped in.

After having arrived there I really made a huge mistake of unclipping the rope from my belay device before I’d secured myself to the next abseil post with my cows tail. Major fail. Seriously. Rocio was not impressed. Should have realized earlier that I needed to top up on sugar and keep my concentration at full power. Needless to say, a Power gel was promptly presented to me. These things are always going to be in my rucksack in the future. After the next abseil there was still a little more downclimbing and lowering to follow. I noted that we passed a distinct gully to out right before we reached one last climb up. We needed to climb up and over this to get across to the next gully, presumably the descent gully. It was a fairly exposed pitch, pretty much like the whole traverse had been, but it went better than I’d expected. I think I trusted my feet more than my hands. From the top of the pitch we traversed across some slabs before finally doing a relatively straightforward downclimb towards the gully. In the start there was some uncertainty as to whether we ought to follow the gully straight down or traverse around the right hand side of the gully and maintain a bit of height. After some looking around we concluded that the obvious descent was to go straight down the gully and follow the obvious, worn tracks. And by north-Norwegian gully standards, this one was pretty OK even though both Rocio and Kenny were convinced it was quite loose.

There was a vague trail from where other people have obviously descended before so it wasn’t too time-consuming to get down the majority of the gully, unroping after a while once the ground became less steep and less loose. After following it down towards the left in its lower part we eventually reached the Tälligletscher again, and by some amount of luck we ended up on a sort of path. Walked across the glacier which seemed to be mostly moraine as opposed to ice or snow here, and then caught up with another group on the other side who we’d seen coming back down from the Fletschhorn. Was pretty thirsty again now, but it wasn’t more than half hour before we arrived back at the Weissmies hut and could enjoy some cold drinks there. Looking back at the Jegigrat from the moraine ridge it was hard to believe that such a short distance of ridge traversing could demand so much time, and I’d been surprised to read that the guidebook time for the route could have been so long (they reckoned the route needed 8-9 hours hut-to-hut). I think we used around 9.5-10hrs, including the longer stop at the end of the moraine ridge while waiting for dawn to break. Well, regardless how much time we ended up using, I still think this final climb may have been my favourite. It wasn’t exactly the most physically strenuous, or particularly famous but there were no crowds, no fixed ropes and plenty of exposure. We headed down towards the lift at Kreuzboden after collecting various things from the Weissmies hut and packing up our rucksacks, finishing off the day with some pretty amazing ice cream at the bakery in Saas Grund :) Thanks to both Kenny and Rocio for a fantastic day on the Jegigrat!