Captain Kevin's Alternative Plan to Gruben

 

Due to the condition of several of the members of the hiking team, Captain Kevin developed an alternative plan for us to get to Gruben (the original route would have been one of the most challenging hiking days ever with huge amounts of elevation gain and descent - given our speed, it might have been another 12 hour day).

The Captain's plan, however, did require us to leave the Auberge Alpina where we had been staying at 7:10 am (there was some grumbling among the troops) in order to walk to a bus stop to catch a bus to St. Luc. As we passed a patisserie that was open, Kevin bought pain du chocolate for all to celebrate Tom and Chanda's anniversary.

Once in St. Luc, we walked some more to the funicular station that we took up the mountain along with lots of mountain bikers.

 

Once we got off the funicular, we stopped at a hillside cafe and had coffee - the troops were now happy and enthusiastic about starting our hike on this beautiful day. The weather helped everyone's spirits for sure!

 

Our alternative route involved going up through the Meidpass col and then descending into Gruben. Gruben is generally considered the first "German" Swiss town, and as we hiked, we certainly heard more German being spoken on the trail. Certainly earlier on the hike, it is part of the culture for every passing hiker to greet you with "bonjour" - now the passing hikers were saying "guten tag."

 

Now don't get the impression that our alternative route was a "piece of cake." No, all morning we could see the Meidpass col rising up ahead of us as we did the slow steady climb up ( the col is right to the left of the jagged spikes).

 

You can see here when we stopped for a break we still had a long way to go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are Tom and Chanda at another break holding up 11 fingers for their 11th anniversary.

 

Of course no accent to a col is complete without a boulder and/or scree field. What made this final ascent even more exciting was having to dodge (quickly step off the narrow trail) for descending mountain bikers who were coming over the pass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were so happy to finally reach the col in the early afternoon and were afforded so spectacular views on both sides.

 

After a brief celebration and lots of photos, we soberly looked at what we still needed to descend to get to Gruben. You can see Greg looking down - note you can't even see the valley floor where Gruben is located!

 

Here you can just begin to get a glimpse of the valley below, but can also see how far we have to go!

Finally, we are able to see where we will be spending the night - at the Hotel Schwartzhorn! We got inside our rooms at about 6 pm - we couldn't imagine what condition we would have been in if our faithful Captain hadn't figured out an alternative route to Gruben!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

The "Full Experience" Today

 

Cabane du Moiry is amazing! It is located on a cliff overlooking the Moiry Glacier. There is a beautiful dining room with a glass wall overlooking the glacier.

 

When we arrived at Cabane du Moiry, we were happy to find out we were placed in a private room for six versus a " dormitory room for 15 plus. Even so, it is still challenging for 6 adults and all their dirty, smelly gear to sleep together in one small room. In this room, we had two people up on top and the other four were lined up like sardines below. In these close quarters, we've all been using ear plugs to try to sleep.

 

We left at about 7:45 am and started a descent down a rocky steep slope. We knew we had a long hike today but also knew there was an option of taking a tram down to Zinal for the last part of the hike.

We spent the morning hiking high up on a really narrow trail overlooking a beautiful glacier lake. Once again, we follow the painted marks along the way in addition to relying on our guidebook that we consult regularly during the day.

 

 

 

 

But, we were in for a "full experience" today - up to this point, we had barely pulled out our rain gear and had not used our new pack covers. At about noon, it started drizzling and we stopped to get our rain gear and pack covers on. This was right before we began the long climb up up today's col. Within a short period of time, we were all feeling miserable. A couple members of our group were hurting today and it certainly isn't as much fun to be doing a challenging climb up in the rain. At our lunch stop, we didn't even bother removing our packs but just ate our sandwiches quickly in the rain.

 

Finally we reached the top of the col, we knew that we had to descend 5236 feet - after assessing the group, we decided we were going to try and hike down to the tram and take that the remainder of the way to Zinal.

 

We hiked as fast as we could down more steep slopes passing many more cows (trying to avoid cow pies :-) along the way.

After a heroic effort from our members who were hurting, we made it to the tram station at about 3:10 pm. By this point, we were all in agreement that the tram was the way to go! We were so happy riding down over the remaining very steep slope to Zinal.

Once we got to Zinal, we still had about a 20 minute walk to our "Alpina" we are staying in for the night.

We finally arrived at the Alpina at about 4:30 pm - it has been a "full experience" day with some good and some challenges. We know that after a good night's sleep, we'll have a fresh perspective tomorrow.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Conquering Col du Tsaté

We left La Sage at about 7:30 this morning ready to tackle our next big hike. As we left Hotel La Sage, we had a beautiful view of the early morning sun on the mountain.

 

The early morning portion of our hike was delightful as we hiked in beautiful rolling pastures complete with rushing streams and more cows - all with a panorama of beautiful peaks behind us. We were all feeling good especially after learning we only had to go over one "col" - col du Tsaté.

 

 

But we had "promised" Tom and Chanda some experience with boulders and scree, so we were "glad" when the beautiful pastures eventually gave way to rocks.

 

Both Tom and Chanda quickly proved they we "mountain climbers," too as we set a goal to get to the top of the col by lunch time.

 

We got to the top of the col at 12:30 pm surpassing Captain Kevin's prediction - yeah hiking team! The newly lightened packs made a big difference, too.

After lunch we started making our big descent down the other side of the col - once we got down to another glacier lake, we made another big ascent to Cabane du Moiry.

The ascent up to the mountain hut was once again challenging and provided Tom and Chanda more experience with negotiating boulder fields and narrow paths with lots of exposure. We stopped several times to take photos including one spot that had a great view of the Moiry Glacier behind us.

 

 

 

We finally made it to the mountain hut at 4:30 and Captain Kevin declared it was our best day of hiking yet - factors included only one col, lighter packs, and the great energy Tom and Chanda have added to our group.

We celebrated by buying tokens to take a hot shower before a wonderful dinner in the dining room. We feel like we accomplished a lot today!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Tom and Chanda's "Test Run" Day

The first thing we did before leaving Arolla was to walk down to "the town" and mail our boxes of items we took out of our packs - today we will do the test run with our newly lightened packs. We mailed our extra stuff to the place we are staying in Zermatt so it wasn't as expensive as if we had shipped to Minnesota.

Luckily, we had a beautiful hike today for Tom and Chanda's first day of hiking. The weather was perfect - sunny and warm without being overly hot. We hiked up the valley as well as going through some little hamlets.

 

 

At the end of a wonderful day of hiking, we arrived at The La Sage Hotel. The hotel is very picturesque and overlooks the valley we hiked through today.

Tom and Chandra did great and are all ready for our next long hike up the mountain to stay in a mountain hut!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy