{"id":4180,"date":"2022-09-15T09:21:06","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T07:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/?p=4180"},"modified":"2023-10-22T14:04:11","modified_gmt":"2023-10-22T12:04:11","slug":"weissmies-an-indiana-jones-path-of-the-alps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/2022\/09\/weissmies-an-indiana-jones-path-of-the-alps\/","title":{"rendered":"Weissmies – An Indiana Jones path of the alps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Weissmies <\/a>used to be billed as an easy 4,000 m peak, suitable for someone\u2019s second big summit, after climbing Allalin<\/a>. You could gondola up to Hohsaas, and in a matter of 3.5 hours be at the summit. In 2005 at the 150 year Anniversary of the first ascent of Weissmies, there were 300 people in one day arriving at the summit. But in the last few years, it\u2019s become a much more challenging peak, and that number has plummeted to just a handful a day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warming temperatures and the melting of the\nglacier have resulted in more crevasses and a danger of falling ice. The normal\nroute was even closed at the beginning of this year as it was deemed too\ndangerous. Then the Saas-Grund Gemeinde approved a route change to avoid the\nfall line of potential breaking ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I spoke with several of our local guides about the\nnormal route before going up this time. One told me he doesn\u2019t take clients on\nthe normal route anymore, another said he would only do it with a client that\nhe knew well and whose abilities he had confidence in. Yet another told me the\nnew challenges make it more fun, now it\u2019s quite an adventurous route to the\nsummit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides the normal route, there are 3 other routes to the Weissmies summit, each of varying difficulties. I had done all of the routes except for the Rotgrat, and I always wanted to do this route as it\u2019s the ridgeline you see from the village. It\u2019s the view I see every day from my living room. It didn’t used to be very popular, but since the normal route has become so much more challenging, more people are moving to the Rotgrat. It\u2019s also not as technical as the Nordgrat and you can make a loop of it down the S\u00fcdgrat or start from the Almageller H\u00fctte<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But that\u2019s not what I was looking for. I was in need\nof some training, as I was hoping to do the Mischabel traverse a few days\nlater. So instead of spending the night in the Almageller H\u00fctte or starting\nwith a gondola ride to Hohsaas, I started from my house, planning to ascend the\nRotgrat and descend the Normal route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left my house at 2:45 am and biked down to Saas-Almagell in the semidarkness. The moon was full, but in the trees along the road to Bodmen it was quite dark. I saw a flying object heading towards me and at the last second I turned my head away, only to have a bat crash into the side of my helmet. What a second cup of coffee!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 3 am I met my buddy in Saas Almagell and we started\nup to the Almageller hut. The moon had set and it was a bit cloudy, but we did\nsome speed walking in the darkness, encountering lots of animals, including a\nlynx and the usual suspects, the steinbock. At dawn we passed the hut, making\nour first stop at a small lake that perfectly framed Allalinhorn in the early\nlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A few years ago, they repainted all the trail markers,\nso you really can\u2019t get lost. This is also really important for those cases\nwhen the weather rapidly changes and you have less visibility. The Rodgrat\noffers great views over the Saas Valley, the trail is not very technical, and\nit is easy to scamper along if you are in good shape. There are also some fun\nmountaineering climbing sections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ascended the ridgeline all the way to the glacier,\nwhere we donned our crampons and got on the rope. At this point the clouds were\nhovering right over the summit. There were a bit of hide and seek clouds, coming\nin and out all the time, so we felt comfortable enough to continue. When we did\nsummit, after 7 hrs 20 minutes, including breaks for snacks and photos, it was\na bit anticlimactic. There is no cross on the summit, just a stake with some\nTibetan prayer flags. The weather didn\u2019t live up to what was forecast, so it\nwasn\u2019t possible to get any nice photos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But for me, the best part of the whole adventure was\nstill ahead, the challenging descent down the normal route to Hohsaas. Standing\nat the summit looking down, we could see the vast difference from what the\nroute was 5 years ago, and it\u2019s current state. It was not going to be a\nstraight shot, and nothing like the highway up to Allalin that it used to be\ncomparable to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was an obvious need to be cautious among so many risk factors. This was such a warm summer. All around us the snow was slushy with crevasses right and left. The trail had been closed for some weeks, and even though it was open now, no one was on it because of the looming dangers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the summit, I made a quick call to my brother in\nlaw, Andi, a local guide. He gave me an update on the normal route from a\nfellow guide that had done it 3 days earlier. Andi encouraged me to descend\nthis way, saying the worst thing that can happen is we have to make the call to\nturn around and go home the long way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And so we began to descend through the labyrinthine.\nIt was, no joke, an Indiana Jones style path to avoid doom in the form of huge\nseracs, massive crevasses, and step icy sections that had to be crossed. Slowly\nand carefully, we navigated this maze, hyper alert for any break in the ice,\nanything that might come crashing down around us. I snapped a photo at the\nlittle lake just above the top of Hohsaas and looking up at the glacier above\nit seems crazy that we just passed through there. You can\u2019t really pick out the\nroute at all. After a 12 hour day, I came home happily expended, tired but\nfeeling that full body high from the adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on your vantage point, Weissmies looks like there isn’t much ice left. It\u2019s hard to tell if the glacier even connects top to bottom any more. Looking at the amount of water pouring out in summer, watching the glacier melt yearly, it seems obvious that very soon there will be no more glacier. But once we were in there, we experienced the north facing section to still be loaded with ice. It was a similar experience to when I went hunting seracs<\/a> <\/a>a few weeks before. The glacier still holds a meaty chunk of ice, it\u2019s not dead yet. If your health allows it, I really encourage you to hire a guide and go see the glacier before it\u2019s gone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Weissmies used to be billed as an easy 4,000 m peak, suitable for someone\u2019s second big summit, after climbing Allalin. You could gondola up to Hohsaas, and in a matter of 3.5 hours be at the summit. In 2005 at the 150 year Anniversary of the first ascent of Weissmies, there were 300 people in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":4182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,288,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discover-experience-en","category-english","category-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4180"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4243,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions\/4243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saas-fee.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}