Five things I learned in the Alps

Having been a geologist for about 12 years and been climbing for 10, I don't know why I had never been climbing in the Alps until now. One of our aims for the summer was to climb some spiky snowy Alpine mountains. In the end, we climbed two of them: the Normal Route on Piz Kesch (PD) and the Weissmies traverse (PD).

Being without a guide or anyone that had been before, we had a lot to learn. Here are five things that I discovered about Alpine climbing that, while revelationary to me, will be patently obvious to anyone that has done it before.

1. It's easy to be strong when you have a pulley system


We've done winter climbing in the UK but the Alps have the added dimension of glaciers. When snow-covered, these present the hazard of a fall into a hidden crevasse and so climbers need to be roped together. When we first arrived in Switzerland, we spent a day on the lower Morterasch glacier, where there was no snow so the crevasses were open and easy to see, practicing crevasse rescue techniques. It was fun setting up different pulley systems to lift each other up, and really impressive how easily someone can be lifted with them.

2. Mountains cost money

The sheer size of mountains makes it very hard to climb from the valley to the summit in a day. However, it turns out that Alpinists are a very civilised bunch and that there is a network of 'huts' high in the mountains that you can use as a base from which to climb the final few hundred metres. The huts are more like hotels, except that you have to walk for a few hours to reach them and they have large communal bunks instead of individual rooms. Arriving at the hut in the early afternoon the day before we climbed Piz Kesch gave us time to relax, enjoying the alpine surroundings.


Bed and breakfast in a hut is about £40 per person. Other mountains have cable cars to take you quickly to the higher slopes. The cable car down from the Weissmies saved us three hours of walking, and cost about £20 each.

3. Altitude makes you fat

High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) are dangerous forms of altitude sickness involving fluid build-up around the lungs and brain respectively. We didn't get either of them. It would also seem, however, that being at altitude can make your face puff up until you look like Chris Moyles.


4. Popular means popular

The Weissmies traverse is described as 'popular' route. It is easy to see why, as it is a straightforward way up a 4000 m peak that passes along some great features such as the snow arete at the top of the south ridge.


Climbing at the weekend, we got a good idea of what popular means in the Alps. In the Almageller hut we were joined by about 60 others for breakfast. As we began the walk, we could see headtorches strung out along the path up to the dark silhouette of the ridge. There was certainly no sense of isolation or ground-breaking exploration, but the scenery and joy of quickly scrambling on clean, solid rock made up for it. Eventually, we shared the summit with about 30 other people. We waited our turn to stand on the top, and there was no shortage of people to take a photograph for us.


Descending via the NW side we met even more aspirant summiteers; these ones were ascending from the valley having caught the first cable car up to 3000 m in the morning. Some were in groups of six or more, short-roped together behind their guide and shuffling along like a chain-gang.


5. Just because it's snowy doesn't mean it's winter

The lower part of the Weissmies descent was also excellent, passing through some big crevasses and spectacular ice blocks. Dropping quickly from the summit, the air became warm and thick and soon we had stripped down to t-shirts. The sun was high and strong, reflecting brightly from the snow. In these conditions, sunglasses are far more important than gloves. This seemed very strange to me, where previously crampons and axes had meant waterproofs and bulky layers. It was August, I suppose.


More of that, please!

Alpinism is fun! The routes that we climbed were relatively straightforward, comprising a snowy-walk and a bit of a scramble. It would definitely be good to get on some more technical routes that involve rock or ice climbing. This will require getting much slicker at moving on wintery mountains. Luckily there will be much more opportunity for that over the next few years once we move to Edinburgh.