Day 3 and 4- Toblerone conquered - the toughest climb yet?

25 August 2024

Zermatt is in the next valley up from Saas, towards Geneva and the drive did not take more than a couple of hours. The village is car free, so you park further down the valley at Täsch central car park and take the train to Zermatt. August is holidays season. So after preparing our overnight pack and changing for the expedition in the middle of the underground car park, we join the hundreds of Japanese, American and European tourists on the train.

15 min ride with beautiful mountain views of green grasses and snowy mountain peaks and you are in town. Zermatt is hundred years old and still maintains that old mountain village atmosphere, despite the upgrade of smart hotels, expensive shops and “posh” chalets.

To get to the base of the Matterhorn, you need to cross town, take the Schwarzsee cable car and then walk 2 hours to the Hornli hut, right below the mountain ridge.

From every angle in town and up the mountain, the Matterhorn’s pyramid shape dominates on the right and you forget to look at the Monte Rosa massif on the left, which is as beautiful, and has 5 separate peaks (two of which are higher than the Matterhorn).

Already in town you find a mixture of tourists and serious walkers and climbers, but it is when you get to the Hornli hut that things become serious. Apart from the record holder, whoran from Zermatt to the top of the Matterhorn in 3 hours(normal people will take 12), everyone else chooses the Hornli as the base for their summit attempt.

So by evening you have 40-50 climbers with their respective guides full of excitement and apprehension for the coming day. When you get there, everyone looks at everyone else, measuring the look first (you do need to look the part) and then the strength/fitness and chance of success the next day. The guides dominate the scene as they exchange “hellos” or, if they know each other, stories of previous climbs in the Alps or somewhere else in the world. Kenton is looked at and admired by those who know who he is. And I am the old man in his charge!

Dinner is served at 7pm. Bed is 9pm. You sleep in rooms of 8 on 4 bunk beds. 4:00am is breakfast and 4:20am departure: Swiss guides first, other guides 20min later and “not guided” climbers after another 10 minutes.

I do not sleep much because of the usual “snorer”(apprehension might have also played a part) and it is at 3am that I notice the first climber disappearing from our room. At 3:30am, I join everyone else frantically dressing and gearing up before breakfast (you end up eating with your harness and in some cases your helmet on!!). And by ten past 4, I am in the crowd of 80 climbers in front of the doors of the hut ready to go.

It was very good that Kenton took me for a “recky” the day before, two hours up the ridge, because the mountain is full on and straight away. 1200 meters straight up on a 90 degree vertical. The first 4-5 steps are on a vertical iron ladder and then on a transversal rope to which you hold on for 20 meters before you join the “normal” path.

 And you do this in the dark (with only the light of the head torch) and in front of a crowd of climbers waiting for their turn. The important thing is not to embarrass yourself immediately.

 I mentioned path, but there is no path. Just a series of boulders, rock faces and walls that you need to negotiate or climb from the very beginning. Some you “free” climb with the only safety of being roped to your guide; some you rock climb, which means you secure the rope with carabines and slings to some iron stakes buried in the mountain and take turns going up. You use legs, hands and in my case “knees” and “elbows”.

 The Swiss guides tend to be the fastest going up as they kind of know the route; the other climbers stagger along the way and quickly disseminate along the rock face; and it is clear that we (Kenton and I) are not going to be the fastest, mainly because of me. My excuse: there is a drop on the left and a drop on the right, both hundreds of meters down and every foot you put wrong you risk the danger of falling, hurting yourself or dying! Not considering you are at 4000m climbing up a near vertical ladder. Altitude takes its toll.

Even if we are slow, we do gain some friends along the way, as everyone is trying to navigate the best path up; and Kenton and I are soon joined by a pair of Polish climbers, who not having a rope - just free hands and a camera on their back – are happy to follow our lead.

2 and half hours and we reach the Solvay hut, an emergency bivouac/box perched on a rock at 4000 meter altitude. From there it is another 3 hours to the top following the ridge and the fixed ropes in the zone of increased danger. It’s on the first sets of rope that we meet the first casualty of the mountain, a Canadian climber suffering from altitude sickness. The helicopter is called.

I break my climb in pieces, one rock at the time, one rope at the time, slowly but relentlessly going up, never stopping, and with 100% concentration on the next rock face or boulder and on where to put my hands and feet. I am so concentrated that Kenton has to mention the beautiful sunrise, which by 7am dominates the mountains. And the closer we get to the summit, the more complicated things become because we start to meet the climbers coming down and sometimes we have 3-4 teams on the same rope or iron pole with climbers sharing a ledge the size of an handkerchief.

Along the way we lose our Polish friends as a Swiss guide notices the lack of rope and the one crampon of our friend (who lost the other one going up). Without rope you endanger other climbers; with no crampons (and without ice axe), no chance to make the last vertical ledge covered in snow. The Polish are sent back.

My mind is so concentrated and I am so focused on my effort and my breathing that I get in a sort of trance. There is nothing in the world except the next step. Not looking down, not looking up. Just the next rock. I am in a dream like haze. Eventually we make the snow ridge. Crampons on, ice axe in hand, we kind of emulate a spider on the last drive to the summit. We make it in 6 hours. Not the fastest but within the limits of what is acceptable. Acceptable because we are not finished. The challenge with the Matterhorn is that going down is even more challenging than going up.

Celebration at the top is fast. There are two summits, the Swiss and the Italian. We are on the Swiss summit. Crossing to Italy (20 meters away) is considered too dangerous. So we take a couple of pictures, eat an apple perched on the only rock ledge that has space enough for two people – the pyramid is a pyramid and there is not much space at the top – and after throwing the core on the Italian side, we start the climb down.

And going down is when the accidents happen, as you face the void whilst jumping from one rock to another and you get increasingly tired. Looking down is not pleasant; the path is not clear and it is easily lost, and the helicopters flying around you continue to remind you that there are only three ways to get off the mountain: walking down, attached to an emergency helicopter cable, or simply falling 1000m into the bottom of the glacier!!!

For this reason, I am slower going down than going up. Finding that grip and selecting that step or 2cm hinge or fixture or break into the rockface that guarantees security, takes time. Luckily some of the challenging rope sections on the way up are tackled by abseiling on the way down. It is while abseiling and throwing myself off a boulder that I find no rock beneath from which to bounce off my feet and instead I hit the hard rock on my side and I am left dangling and in pain because of a bruised rib!!!

But we continue. I would love to say the climb down was a pleasure, but it was not. My insistence in keeping safe meant we took quite a long time. The news from the people we met were unfortunately not good. Many climbers had to turn back after a guide had fallen into the void. And soon we had a following of climbers trusting Kenton to ensure we were on the right track.

It took seven hours to come down. In the end we were followed by a Greek couple, a Slovakian guide with her Russian/Czech friend, a few Polish and a couple of young British kids who unfortunately had seen the guide accident happening in front of their eyes and were visibly shocked.

By the end of the 7th hour down, 13th hour climbing (and not much sleep the night before) I was done. Words were exchanged between me and Kenton in the last 10 minutes when I was completely exhausted and could no longer trust my feet. And on the Matterhorn the danger does not stop until the last step off that first ladder where we started in the morning.

We had started at 04:30 in the morning. We finished at 5:30 in the afternoon. Back to Hornli, we could finally celebrate.

But as with any mountain expedition, there is always a surprise.

Our plan A) was to finish the climb in time to make the cable car to Zermatt; plan B), in case we missed the cable car, was to overnight at the Schwarzsee hotel next to the cable car; plan C), if we were really late, to overnight again at the Hornlihut and walk down in the morning.

We were very late. So we agreed to activate plan C). But guess what? Hornli was full. So at 18:30, after having called Schwarzsee to check if they had accommodations we started the 2 hours walk down. 13 + 2 = 15 hours on your feet after a night of not much sleep. Great!!!

The walk down late in the evening was actually spectacular. The vast expanse of the mountains completely empty. Only Kenton and I walking down in a stunning summer evening, surrounded by rocky peaks, snow-capped glaciers and an incredible sunset.

We did stop a few times to take it all in and had finally time to admire the Matterhorn and its beautiful pyramid cutting the evening sunset into two. We had been up there only a few hours earlier!

You would think I am finished, but no. Miss-communication at the Schwarsee hotel meant there was no room when we finally got there at 9 in the evening. Would you consider walking down to Zermatt, was the question. NO, the answer.

It is only by insisting (and begging and threatening that we would sleep on the floor of the restaurant) that finally a double room appeared. We even managed to convince the young Swiss cook to make us an egg, cheese and rosti for dinner.

A quick shower, our smelly clothes (socks in particular) and boots outside the window, a barefoot dinner, and we were finally in bed by 10pm.

The rest of the story is pretty normal. Rested, and after breakfast on day 5, we took the cable car into Zermatt, train to Täsch and we were back changing into clean clothes in the same car park where we all started two days earlier.

So the big question/s: did I enjoy it? And why?

It was probably not the toughest expedition, but certainly the toughest one day climb I have ever made and the longest rock climbing session in all my life. The Matterhorn is a fascinating and beautiful mountain but you cannot ever lose the apprehension that it is very dangerous and you are risking your life.

I considered myself very fortunate to have made it and I think Kenton played a major part in keeping the old man safe. To him goes my eternal thanks.

To my friend Gozalo and the many who have perished attempting goes my admiration and eternal memory.