Smiler Cuthbertson – Mountain Guide

Superb icy rocks on the ridge

My own careless fault, but how many of us have, at the end of a great day out, loaded the damp and snowy gear into the car boot, and failed to spot the axe on the floor?

It had been a great day, good weather for a time, but after doing the Fiachaill Ridge and coming down the Goat Track, with it being 1pm by now,  I chose not to do another solo and just get home. I stopped for a butty and a drink from my flask at the ‘Breakfast Stone’, now re-named ‘Lunch stone’. The glorious morning had deteriorated into thick clag. I could hear several parties on routes like (probably) Goat Track, Red Gully, The Runnel and maybe a couple more to the left, but saw nothing.

Oh well, I had done my GPS setting, and it had been enough to be on my own on the ridge, the rocks tricky, but covered in reasonable snow, especially on the steep middle section, so why push it?

 

Going out, there was plenty of snow at ground level but I was amazed at the wide and solid track winding through the rocks and along the side of the valley floor. Sneachda must have had much more attention over the last few days than I had realised and today was no exception. Superb early season climbing.

I’ll be back soon, and maybe some kind person will have picked up my Mountain Technology Vertige (straight-Shaft) axe and is sending me a nice Christmas present. They’d definitely get one back!

A Mis-calculation? No siree. That’s what my final 2011 course acheived – in meters of height, gained on four peaks in the Saas Valleys.

Working with Murray is always a good time and Graeme was also booked, as the

third guide on the course, The clients, eight hardy types, apparently well prepared with previous KE trips and UK climbing under their belts? We knew we’d be having some fun.

Steering my Citroen into Switzerland I bought a vignette at the service station at Martigny. At long last I was legal, and the motorway pass would be needed when I returned through Switzerland en-route to Goppingen in Germany, where I intended to meet up with my brother and his family for a couple of days. It would be with my niece, Lynn, her final few days before coming to the UK as an Au Pair.

Humming down the motorway through Sierre and Sion, the weather was pretty close to perfection. If only it would hold. Graeme and I would meet up at the hotel

around 9am, Murray having spent the night before there with the clients, and he would take them on the nice leisurly walk up to the Britannia hut from the Mattmark Lake area. We would join the team at the hut.

I arrived a fraction ahead of Graeme and I met the owner of the lovely Hotel Heino, Gorda, on arrival in Saas Grund. She instantly made me feel welcome with nice Swiss coffee. Once Graeme had arrived and prepared his sack for the glacier training day, we took the Metro to Felskin  and walked around to the hut. Part of the original track had recently been designated as dangerous (I always though it was, but it had got much worse) and we had a longer detour before we were all together at last.

Lizzie was the only female team member. The boys ranged from mid-fourties to twenty somethings, and they were all very keen to get over to the the glacier from the hut for

Aide on the glacier below the Britannia Hut

their first afternoon’s ice practice.

Dropping down to the glacier from the hut, we three guides split into different techniques training programmes, myself being keen to examine how the boys handles the steep and narrow ice aretes in crampons.

My two charges, Martin and Aide, were brothers and were keen to learn as many tricks as possible, ready for the time they’d go it alone. Some super (and very narrow) ice ridges were located and followed until I was confident my two lads were more than ready for the mountains to come. The altitude would be a different matter to prepare for.

After almost three hours on the ice it was time to head back up ‘Heartbreak Hill’, the track back up to the Britannia Hut, not disimilar to the horrid trek back up to base camp on Denali, a long stretch of very tedious up-hill graft that is unavoidable if you want a flight out to Talkeetna. We were only going back up to the hut but for the first day at altitude for the lads, it was their ‘Alaska’ all right. I didn’t mention how much more tiring it would be after the Stahlhorn trek the next day?

The 03.45 breakfast may sound early for a trekking peak, but we guides knew just

how strenous a first real day would be on the Strahlhorn. We needed to get up and off the beast before the sun did too much damage to the snow. Although I’d done the route quite a few times before, it had been twenty years since I had last been on the peak but its reputation for being a ‘slog’ is well founded, well remembered by me, and the first couple of hours in the dark needed a joint approach from the team. It was very tricky to pick out the way through the morraine ridges. Eventually, we did feel the direction was correct and crossed rubble interspersed with ice ridges until we reached the more level area. The three teams converged here and soon we were all heading for the col (Adler Pass?). Once on the final summit ridge we all re-learnt how tough it is on that last section, but soon the peak was ours. Not too bad a time I thought. The team’s first peak was in the bag.

 
The descent is  tiring and horrible undefoot by this time of day. No alternative though but to get going and keep going. Heartbreak Hill proved a hard task but soon we were all back at the hut and relaxing. A good effort all round.

The following day was a much easier trek after the Strahlhorn (4190meters). The Alallinhorn ascent to 4027 meters is a much easier climb. Once past all the skiers after the Metro top station, we got into our rhythms and cruised to the summit. Everyone felt it was much easier than the previous day, but we pointed out

that acclimatisation was now getting much bertter.

Now with all our kit from the Britannia Hut in our sacks, we could descend to the top station and go all the way down to Saas Fee. The afternoon in Saas Grund was spent relaxing and the facilities at the Hotel Heino were fully utiilised.

The plan for the following day was the trek up to the Almageller hut. Murray had a suprise for even me though. Getting off the bus in Saas Almageller, we all walked a little further out of the middle of town than I expected to, until a sweet little cable car whisked us up to a nice traversing path and some sections of via ferrata path which curled across the steep hillside I had climbed directly up on my

previous visit to the Almagller Hut. It certainly took some of the uphill strain out of the approach.

Reaching the half-way hotel, we rested here and while I looked after the ordering of coffees, Murray and Greame fitted some top-ropes on the huge boulder a short distance away from the ‘hotel’. There weren’t many takers for the extra activity, but Aide especially found his (virtually) first rock climbing experience, qute good fun and exciting and also very useful training for the following day on the Weismiess with its rocky scramble  most of the way to the summit.

That following day proved a real buzz for the team. The scrambling was sustained,

and it was slightly snowing to boot, so more care was needed with the rocky steps and footholds. The two brothers, Aide behind me and Martin as last man, climbed admirably to the summit, and were rewarded by a superb snow ridge descent that in the prevailing conditions, was pretty simple yet at the same time very

exhillarating.
With all three teams together at all times, we reached the Hohsaas Hut in good time, avoiding the usual concern (if one is late) with the seracs on the descent.
We dropped down to the Weismeiss hut, now with three out of our planned four peaks in the bag.

Our final early start for the Lagginhorn (4010 meters) was again in good weather. We’d been lucky all along so far, just having that slight snow storm on the Weismiess to handle, but the final

peak’s weather was simply glorious. So was the route. I love the scrambling over the rocks on the ascent and the final snowy zig-zag which soon eased to a beautifully small, neat summit. Other British guides were also on the peak and it was a very sociable occasion.

The descent beckoned and we made short work of this, my team taking the direct descent down the rock ridge rather than dropping into the cwm where we had ascended. For me this was great fun, giving me great and fond memories of the boulder-hopping we just to do down the river in the Llanberis Pass in those early years. However,  Aide was showing signs of fatigue. We still managed to pull away from the other teams and reach the Weismeiss hut well ahead of the others. We deliberated on how long we would wait beore dropping down the fairly short trip to the Hohsaas lift and the half-way cable car station. My two lads were keen to get back for showers etc and we packed and prepared for an ‘early dart’.
Just as we were thinking of setting off, everyone appeared, so it was a very happy team that descended together and sat chatting and joking, outside the Hotel Heino drinking cool beers while we sorted the photos out onto each of our SD cards in our cameras.

Saying farewell to a really nice bunch of climbers, I remarked on how good this course had been. Four peaks in five days, 16234 meters of ascent…. Oh, that’s where I came in….?

I sped back to Argentiere, keen to see if I’d really finished and could pack and leave

for the UK soon, or had Clare picked up some late bookings and I would stay a bit longer?
No such luck (or was it?) so after a day in town clearing and packing up, it was off to Germany.

The 2011 summer season that almost never happened. I’m so pleased it did.