Day 1: We took the Montenvers train from Chamonix up to the Mer de Glace for a bit of crevasse rescue practice and gentle acclimatisation in advance of doing anything more serious. The infamous Mer de Glace ladders turned out to be great fun. We used basic “cow tails” to clip on for extra security and » read more »
The Petersgrat Glacier is a huge plateau of ice a few hundred meters higher than the Mutthorn Hut (and around a mile or so to the south of it). It forms the end of the south west ridge of the Tschingelhorn. We hired crampons and harnesses in Wengen. We’d brought our own ropes, ice axes, slings, prussics and » read more »
This September (2024) we returned to Sëlva Val Gardena for a week of Via Ferrata but were surprised to find a fresh dump of snow and very cold temperatures for the week. This caused us a last minute repack to include ice axes, snow chains and crampons as well as several extra warm clothes, hats » read more »
This summer we decided to do the first half of the Swiss Alpine Passes Route which closely follows the Via Alpina route. The route can be squeezed into two weeks walking by rushing through it with public transport and so on, but it fits more naturally into a good 3 week trip. So we split » read more »
Author: Phil Newby
