A day that can be summed up by a single activity - faffing. We had planned that in our last few days we would head up the Matterhorn and much of the morning was spent planning this. In essence it is rather simple, go to the hut at the bottom of the ridge and then get up very early the next morning and sprint to the top and back again and head back down for tea and medals. What makes the Matterhorn tricky is the exposure and the nature of the route is a that there is a single route up which is also used on the way down as well, meaning a lot of crossing groups. Once our kit was sorted we walked over to the mountain guides office to check out the weather forecast for the next few days. This was terrible. Much debate ensued but the result was a majority decision that the Matterhorn had gone from on to very off. While deciding what to do for the next few days, which would be largely restricted to lower level routes, we wondered around the Matterhorn museum and the very sobering graveyard of climbers. With even our beer drinking enthusiasm dented we took an early night with our fingers crossed that the weather wouldn't be as bad as predicted.
Day ten - Haute route |
10Aug 2008