“Where do we go now?” he asked, staring ahead at a dense cotton ball mass of cloud that obliterated every contour and land feature. Even I was barely visible to him, being at least ten metres ahead.
“Up, up, ever up,” I said, kicking small steps in the snow for him and hoping I sounded confident. I didn’t address the question of exactly which of the hundred and twenty degrees on offer was our particular way up. We were on a rough compass bearing, but such bearings assume your point of departure is known, and I had set ours from the middle-of-nowhere-specific. We were somewhere on the Theodul Glacier, heading for the Theodul Pass, but passes can be quite tricky to find in a whiteout. We were above 3,000 metres above sea level, not a good place to spend the night outside if my leadership failed.
We were, at that moment, heading for the first hut on our chosen trek – the Tour de Monte Rosa – and perhaps with that beginning it might seem odd to announce that if you are seeking a multi-day trek in the alps that is beautiful yet not overcrowded, that will challenge your fitness and skills, yet be achievable, then perhaps the Tour de Monte Rosa is for you. Along with the Tour du Mont Blanc, it is my equal favourite circular route in the alps. It has to its distinct advantage the fact that it is little known, and thus not crowded out with commercial tour groups being ushered through en masse.
The author takes a giant leap.
I guess my least favourite moments of the trip were those between my husband’s question above and the moment when my feet, which I couldn’t see (quite unnerving) felt the gradient change underneath them and I knew that I had found the pass. Uncertainty and mild fear turned rapidly to excitement and jubilation. We’d done it. We’d crossed the much-hyped glacier and made it to the frontier between Switzerland and Italy. To our right (west), a mere two minutes away, so rumour said, there was a hut, although this mist was so thick that anything ten seconds away was invisible.
That evening, sitting at table with new friends and gazing out the window at a pure white Matterhorn that seemed startlingly close, I felt supremely satisfied, and thought that even if the rest of the route was horrid, everything had been and would be worth it for this one moment of sitting here and feeling this elation. The combination of magnificent scenery and release from fear is an intoxicating one.
Our joy was perhaps intensified as we had more hurdles to overcome than most. I had, in fact, believed the route to be impossible for us, as my husband has Parkinson’s disease, and had we needed to rope up on the glacier, I wouldn’t have been willing to do it. Bruce is significantly heavier than I am, and I thought that if he fell down a crevasse, he’d end up taking me down too. I didn’t want to lug an ice-axe the whole journey (or rope for that matter), and I’m just not strong enough to deal with him falling. However, the very helpful people in the Mountain Guide Office in Zermatt told me I would have no problem as the snow was still firm up there. They said I should even be able to see where the tracks where skiers went, which I could. Unfortunately, they do not go where we were going, but their indentations in the snow did help before the mist closed in so definitively…
……The story continues in Wild issue 150. Subscribe today.