Beyond The Mountains
August 2017
When people ask me about my trip to Tanzania, I tell them I went for the mountain, but the safari blew my mind. Switzerland was the opposite. We went for the mountains and they didn't disappoint. Although the focus of the trip was on the mountains, we did our best to see the country and experience the culture as well. Here are some of the other sights and experiences we enjoyed on our trip. We wrote parts of this while we were there but never finished it, so we have gone back and added some events along with recollections of the things that happened and sights we saw.
Day 1 - We arrived in Zurich and took the train to Grindelwald. We would get our first glimpse of the Eiger as the sun was setting. Justin says "Holy shit; these mountains are big." As we sat in our camp and looked up, we could see the lights from Mittellegi hut. "That's a long way to the hut."
Day 2 - Starting at 3am, we climbed the lower portion of Mittelligi ridge. From our camp in Grindelwald, we climbed the via feratta to Ostegg hut and continued on to Mittellegi hut where we made a decision to go down the mountain to avoid being stuck up there if the forcasted blizzard created impassable conditions. Justin wrote about this climb in his first Eiger blog. Eiger - Grindelwald to Mittellegi He later admitted "I was worried about our first day. Most people just do half of what we did."
Day 3 - It was raining heavily in Grindelwald and snow had fallen on the Eiger. The route we had intended to climb was now out of condition. After a very long and tiring day yesterday, we wanted to make the best of a rainy day so we boarded a train to Interlaken and took a boat tour across Lake Brienz. 
Day 4 - We woke up and broke down our wet tent and headed to the train station; we were headed toward Zermatt. It was about a 3 hour trip but we would depart the train for camping in Randa, a small town just 20 minutes from the high priced Zermatt. When we got off the train, we began walking and with heavy packs on our backs, the progress was slow. We happened to see a man leaving a building so we asked if he could tell us where camping was. He told us to hold on and he would take us there. Awesome; huge time and effort savings! The man was a true version of Swiss in every sense - a leather vest, leather boots, a black fedora hat folded to one side and a cigarette in his mouth. I threw our bags in the back of the truck and jumped in the bed alongside them. Laura rode in the front. The man said that what he was doing wasn't allowed in Switzerland but that he didn't care! A rebel I guess!? He asked where we were from and when Laura told him America, he replied "Oh, Trump country! I don't know how a place so big can be so screwed up!" Laura laughed as we pulled into the campground. 
After getting our camp set up, we hiked to the longest suspension bridge in the world, which had just opened a few days prior. My quote, "Rad. Kevin tagged me in Facebook on it, so we did it". Laura said "It was cool" " I liked the Europahutte". From our camp, we hiked for about an hour up very steep terrain - something I explained as our local hike, Section 16, on steroids. As we hiked, the conversation turned to how amazing it was to finally be here in the Alps. The mountains here are thrilling and huge in comparison to Colorado maintains. They seem to rise abruptly from the earth, have glaciers and waterfalls and are all quite rocky, pointy and steep.
To get to the bridge, we hiked up the steep and rocky trail for about 2,000' of elevation over about 2.5 miles. When we finally made it to the bridge, it was amazing. We walked across and continued up to a mountain hut just 20 minutes past the bridge. We spent a few minutes exploring the hut, one of hundreds of huts in the Alps, said to be the best hut system in the world. We headed down and arrived back in camp just 3 hours after setting out on the journey that was our "rest day".
Tomorrow we head to Zermatt for our first views of the Matterhorn. No one could be more excited!
Day 5 - We awoke in our camp in Randa to a fresh layer of snow on the mountains above. It was raining so we headed to Zermatt and went in a coffee shop for breakfast and to get out of the rain. As we were sitting upstairs I heard a commotion, there was a man running a herd of goats down the street, who where quickly followed by a street cleaner...aaahhh, Zermatt! We spent the day exploring the high priced town knowing all too well that it was snowing up on the Matterhorn, making our route impassable for at least a few days. And so the waiting begins. As with things in life, mountains require patience, something I don't posses a lot of! My quote for the day was regarding the Matterhorn and climbing conditions, "I knew we were in trouble".Days 6 - 10
The rain was persistent and forced Laura and I to put the mountains on hold as conditions were simply far to dangerous to climb our intended routes. We spent several days exploring the country and making good use of our unlimited rail pass. We traveled to Schynige Platte in the mountains across the valley from Eiger, Jungfrau and Monch, went on a short hike and listened to the alpen horns play several times each hour.While our indecision about the Matterhorn continued, we rode the gondola and made the best of being outside by climbing an easy 4,000 meter peak - Breithorn.
We had met three guys the day before who had bailed off the route we would go for - they had ropes and full technical mountaineering gear but were still defeated. After we climbed, I told Laura "We walk on worse snow from our door to our car". I just didn't understand. It was amazing to see folks roped up and with guides on this seemingly simple mountain. A packed trench lead to the easy summit and we were easily able to complete the peak in our tennis shoes.
After a good nights rest in camp Randa, we hiked to Gletschergarten and Hangebrucke. Our goal was to find a via Ferrara, but we never found it. We later learned that you could not access the via ferrata without a guide hired from Zermatt Mountain Guides. 
Since I had comments for a few other parts of the trip, this is what I had to say. "Why do all the Swiss think they need guides for everything?" "I was surprised people weren't wearing their crampons in town because it was raining and might ice up." The alpine center in Zermatt was bogus. They wouldn't even talk to us since they knew we were only there for some beta and wouldn't be hiring their guides. "Bogus ass mountain guides... If someone needs a guide for the Matterhorn, call me, I'll do it for half price."
We figured we had better stay in good practice for scrambling and simulclimbing so we chose to climb a pure rock route I had heard of on Riffelhorn. I thought it was a cool route and am glad we did it. Was a good alternative to climbing in mass amounts of snow. This is also the place where I first noticed that Japanese people stare at you endlessly because of the climbing gear. There is not much rock climbing there, so they were quite intrigued by our cams and rope!
It seemed there was always a lot to do to burn time but both Laura and I always had the mountains on our minds. We made the decision to at least go take a look at the conditions up close so the following morning we went to Hornli hut with a plan to climb the following day if conditions allowed. We scouted the lower portions of the route and learned that there were many, many options for climbing - few which were not filled with loose rock. We thought the route was doable, so we booked our stay the night at the hut but woke up to rain and ice everywhere. We descended and headed back to Randa to do laundry and make a new plan. "I was unsure whether tomorrow or the next day, but I knew we were going back"- Justin.
Lots of snow was melting and conditions were slowly improving. There were no guides on the mountain yet due to poor conditions, but we felt that was overly conservative. One other thing we noticed was how crazy the weather was and how every day weather changes and how the Matterhorn seems to make its own weather. There is always a cloud lingering nearby.We finally took our chances and climbed The Matterhorn. Read about it here.
On our way down from the climb, I was resting waiting for the gondola to open and Laura suddenly woke me up. There were mad sheep heading my way and I was about to be trampled! My days summary was "We took the gondola down from the Matterhorn and were relaxing, then, all I know is you woke my ass up because I was getting run over by goats that hate each other. I was sleeping good!" We headed back to camp and relaxed and cooked a grand meal in the jetboil. Our new friend Edwardo nicknamed me "Boils" since I was boiling lots of water to cook with and only had a 1/2 liter pot for complete meals for three weeks!Waking early the following morning we once again boarded the train near Randa and headed for Grindelwald to make an attempt on The Eiger and Mittelegi Ridge. Read about it here.
Phew, we got the mountains!
Let's continue to explore the country in our remaining days. We took train to Murren and did a via ferrata route, then rode the train back to Randa to get our gear that we didn't want to deal with while in Grindelwald. The following day we boarded the spectacular Glacier Express train. Heading all the way across the country via the scenic route, Laura and I were the only ones who brought our own food. I made sandwiches while others drank $15 cups of tea.
We set up camp near St. Moritz and over the following days climbed Spazacaldera in the Albigna Valley as well as the extremely exposed La Fiamma.
The region is super cool and it was awesome to see a different part of the country, the Yosemite of Switzerland. We also climbed at morteratsch, where we found amazing wild raspberries at the base of the crag. I almost got killed on a 7c (according to Laura). We continued to notice the fine details of the Alps and thought how "it is crazy how you can be in the forest and have glaciers right above you."
On our last day in St. Moritz, we climbed at Plaun da Lei, relaxed at the park watching kite surfers. There were 100's of them!
