Gwilym's Adventure Blog

Me going up  Having a rest Me in descent After a decent evening meal and a night in the Rothornhutte , we were woken up at 04:00 for breakfast (well a fairly pathetic breakfast to be honest) and started heading up. We had a snow plod, a scramble up a ridge and a glacier crossing before we arrived at the base of the Rothorngrat route on the Zinal Rothorn . The first half of the route was easy and we soloed along. Unfortunately I was not as acclimatised as I would have hoped for and I started suffering at around 3800m so Rick did a good job of getting us moving together on a rope for the final 200m of climbing. Even though I was feeling rough it was a very good route. We than endured a total of 2600m of descent with a 20 min break at both the Rothornhutte and and Trift Hotel before arriving back in Zermat at 7pm

This morning Rick and I drove to Tasch, took the train to Zermat 1600m and then walked into the Rothornhutte which was a 1600m climb to 3198m. The view on arrival was stunning. This was a long haul uphill with climbing bag and took around 6 hours.

Rick in blue, his shadow up and to the right, my shadow belaying further up the ridge After a decent meal and reasonable nights sleep in Cabane D'Orny at 2831m, Rick and I had an early start (after seeing an amazing sun rise) and a short walk to the base of Aiguille D'Orny for our second route, La Moquette . This was a 8 pitch route taking us up to 3150m before heading down via Cabane D'Orny to the chair lift and back in the valley by 2pm. We are now back at Rick's place in Lausanne planning the next few days.

This morning Rick and I caught the chair lift up from Champex Lac and after a 2 1/2 hour walk in arrived at the very welcoming Cabane D'Orny . I quick drink to refresh ourselves and we headed up to Aiguille de la Cabane (2999m) to climb Bon Accueil which was 6 pitches from 4b to 5b. We swung leads before an abseil/walk descent and back to the hut for a chill out, relax and acclimatisation.