Alps 2012 Part 6

After a few days at home, I headed back out to the Alps with another old climbing friend of mine, Jordan. Our intention this time was to have a more relaxed approach, probably only attempting a couple of peaks and having rest days in the valley. We arrived in Zermatt late in the evening, and immediately started hiking up steep woodland trails towards our first objective; the remote 4198m Rimpfischhorn. This was a peak of personal significance to me, having made several unsuccessful attemps on it back in 2010 with my Dad.

Sometime around midnight we found a meadow to camp in just outside the alpine village of Findeln. The next day we pushed on past the Berghaus Flue (traditional starting point for the route), and made a base camp by a pool at just under 2700m. From here the route followed a long and tedious trail over a subpeak called Pfulroe (3314m) before finally reaching the West-South West flank of the Rimpfischhorn.

In order to split up the long approach, and also help speed up Jordan's acclimatisation, we packed what we needed for the climb, hiked over Pfulroe that same evening, and found a good bivy spot on the Rimpfischhorn itself at c3300m. We slept on a ledge in our sleeping bags. Fortunately the night was clear and warm, and we began our attempt at 4am feeling pretty good.

We traversed over easy slabs and snowfields for a while, before joining a whaleback glacier. Two years ago, Dad and I were sinking up to our thighs in fresh snow every step; this time it was bare and icy. We gained height steadily. At 3800m the glacier ended abruptly in a wall of rock. Here we scrambled up the vague crest of a loose ridge, passing the odd step of II.

At the top of the ridge lay the snow dome of point 4001m. This gradually steepened into a couloir which breached the defenses of the final summit buttress on the right hand side. Here we encountered bad conditions, and the crux of the route. The couloir wasn't steep, I'd guess somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees at the top, but it consisted of bare, bulletproof ice which our axes could hardly penetrate. Knowing it would be much worse coming down, we moved together as fast as possible, and were relieved to get back on rock again. Slightly harder scrambling, and sections of II+, led to the summit, which we reached sometime around 8:30.

As feared, the couloir was tricky to descend. We belayed the initial steep part then front-pointed down together back to the snow dome. A sudden storm developed on the neighboring Monte Rosa massif, so we retraced our steps to the bivy ledge at full speed, anxious not to be caught out should it spread any further. Fortunately it didn't, and we regained our bivy kit and slogged back down to our tent in the afternoon.