Ober Gabelhorn: taking on a giant that would leave a lasting mark on us

Two days that will stay etched in our memories

Account written on Saturday 28 May by Florian F, my brilliant climbing partner on this adventure.

Dorsan and I set off very late from Zinal towards the Grand Mountet hut. Arriving at the hut at 19:30, we can get cooking straight away! A good big kilo of fried potatoes for two! Just after 20:00, two Polish climbers walk into the hut, exhausted and burnt to a crisp by the sun. They're coming back from the north face of the Ober Gabelhorn, where they were stopped by 300 m of 55° ice — and our plan was to go on that face… If these two have given up, we surely don't stand a chance: they've been on expeditions in the Karakoram and talk about Adam Bielecki and Tomasz Mackiewicz as acquaintances.

We get up at 2 a.m.; I force myself to swallow some cereal with powdered milk — it doesn't go down well. At 2:40 we're off, but we take the wrong path in the moraine and head due east instead of due south, which costs us 40 minutes before we finally set foot on the glacier.

After a few minutes on the flat, we start climbing and put on our crampons. The slope steepens very quickly and we start up a first 45° couloir, 500 m long, on the left bank of the glacier. It seems endless, but we move fast. Thanks to the tracks the Poles left the day before, we only partly sink into the snow, despite a poor overnight freeze. Dorsan has barely slept and is feeling the lack of sleep, so I take the lead to set the pace.

We reach a beautiful glacial plateau at the foot of the North face, which is indeed all ice, so we decide to go up the Cœur ridge, graded D, commitment IV.

First we have to climb mixed ground of poor snow and rock with grade 4 sections: in places the slope steepens to 50° and it's impossible to place any protection. As Dorsan puts it: “no room for error, or it's a free ticket to Tupac and Balavoine's last concert”.

Once on the snow ridge, we discover the scale of what we still have to cover... but it's marvellous: this ridge is super aesthetic. Again, no way to protect our progress: on the right, a 1000 m glide down the West face, and on the left a 400 m slide down the North face — utterly unforgiving.

We move unroped; sometimes I lead to break trail, sometimes Dorsan does. 100 m below the summit, the snow is no more than 5 cm deep in places, and underneath lies a layer of hard ice that our crampons can barely bite into. We pitch two rope lengths using ice screws, and at last Dorsan reaches the summit first. The view is breathtaking, and we're happy to be there at last. But the climb is far from over!

We begin with a string of abseils down the ENE ridge (towards the Wellenkuppe, the summit we planned to go over). It's hard to find the abseil anchors under the snow, and once at the last belay we have to make a decision. The route we wanted to take down is impassable: big snow cornices, a poor freeze, and a ridge still patchy with snow... we don't want to go down that way.

But the other routes (including the one we came up) are hardly more appealing for the descent. We opt for the East face, which has no recorded route. And with good reason: a 250 m descent that is unstable and steep, through a jumble of stones, sand and bad, slippery snow.

In short, it was very delicate and almost impossible to protect. In this chaos, it took us a good 3 hours to reach the slopes of the Gabelhorngletscher. Once on the glacier we still had to cross big crevasses and descend hundreds of metres of glacier. Luckily we discovered the so-called “bum-ski” technique, big rides down snow slides and bergschrund jumps (okay, we laugh about it now, but in hindsight the famous toboggan-style bergschrund jump on our backsides was not planned at all and is probably not such a great idea). It was quite incredible to have so much fun in such an inhospitable place, but at least the descent was efficient, without compromising our safety too much.

We finally took off our crampons at 2950 m to eat lunch, at around 5 p.m.... Before that, 15 hours of getting by on cereal bars and Twix!

We still had to go down through endless scree and moraine, then cross a raging glacial torrent, before finally reaching the path down to Zermatt.

We took it at a run to catch the 20:35 train from Zermatt, after more than 18 hours on the go, 20 km and almost 2000 metres of ascent. A big day, and not over yet!

The train took us to the car park at the edge of the village, where we flagged down cars, begging for a lift. The second car to stop was a van driven by a German looking for a truck stop — he prefers sleeping on motorways to sleeping in nature! This really nice guy made a 60 km detour to drop us in Sion, from where we hitchhiked again to Vex.

At 22:30 we were home, eating a huge plate of pasta. At one in the morning we were finally asleep, after 23 hours awake non-stop. It's in moments like these that you discover reserves you never knew you had.

I think we managed well throughout this climb; we listened to each other attentively and kindly — when one of us had a low moment, the other was there for him, and vice versa.

This day was very much a mental one overall. I think I came close to cracking at times. It's in those moments that the rope team takes on its full meaning: it's no longer just a rope linking us to stop us falling, it's a bond that reminds us we're there for each other, that we're not on our own. It's so important to listen to each other, to know at every moment whether the other is feeling good or not, whether he's comfortable or scared, tired or in good shape...

Over these two days I discovered what “REAL alpinism” is. It's experience that lets you get through and manage moments like these, and it's by living moments like these that you gain experience.

Thank you, life! (Dorsan: Thank you, Lord!)

And thank you, Dorsan, for this spirit of the rope.

Florian