August 17, 2009
Climbing, summiting, and most importantly, getting safely down Monte Cervino (pronounced Ch-er-vino), known to most of the world as the Matterhorn, requires rock climbing, snow and ice, and navigational skills. When all of the above are lacking as the Czechs implied when we arrived at the Carrel Hut the night before summit day at 10 PM, they suggested a strong will may suffice. Alternatively you can pay a guide $2,500 to tell you where to place your hands and feet for approximately 9 hours and with fair weather and a moderate fitness level, you may make it to the top and back down. If you find the hut too grimy with 60 people packed in each night and no water other than what you carried in yourself, then you can kindly ask your extremely competent guide to drag you the additional 6 hours down the infamous Whymper Chimney (where Edward Whymper fell 200 ft trying to free-climb the rock corner to the platform where the Carrel hut now stands), lower you past the often wet and slippery fixed ropes which descend sustained vertical rock, teeter across the windy, precipitous Col De Leone, and skitter along the chossy snow gullies and down the broken terraces, additional awkward chimneys, and slippery snow fields, all the while taking only a cursory glance at the memorial stones marking the places where early and recent mountaineers finished their last epic struggles.
Guides Revered, Mountain Geology, Iconic Huts, and Historic Epics
If you lack the stamina to trundle all this way down to the sleepy, relatively unknown town of Cervinina, you can settle in at the Carrel Hut, recently renovated due to rockfall, though it seems much of the renovation was focused on adding a swanky addition for the guides while the common space leaves much to be desired. Guides, after all, are revered in this part of the world as you can see each August when they parade in traditional uniform down the high alpine mountain streets past the statues erected in their honor. The Carrel Hut is named after the Italian guide from Cervinia, Jean-Antoine Carrel, whose memorial stone lies only a few hundred feet above the lower Abruzzi Hut on the flanks of Cervino, which, for most people who make it this far, indicates the successful navigation of all dangers. It is said Carrel died here of fatigue just short of reaching the town after descending the mountain with some clients he brought to safety.
The Carrel Hut is situated high on the mountain’s slope at a notch in the ridgeline at the base of Cervino’s main massif of imposing gneiss. The massif is actually an ophiolite, or ocean bottom sequence of rocks upthrusted with the movement of the continental plates. Once surrounded by glaciers and persistent snow, it now hovers above sweeping valleys half full of broken glaciers littered with fallen rocks. When standing on the airy balcony watching the clouds swirl in, you are surrounded by steep European Alps, a life time of climbing goals for many. If you are forced to weather out a few days in the hut you may think yourself lucky when reading the Italian Guide’s Register of past epics recorded in the only hut literature besides the radio instructions. Here you will find eerily similar accounts of climbers caught in summer storms, resulting in daring, drawn-out helicopter rescues aimed at saving the unfortunate souls, or at least, a few of their digits. Climbers from all over the world, though few English speakers and only the occasional American, record their reverence for the mountain, its guides (approximately 200 guides work the Liongrat route, only 3 of which are women), its weather, and last but certainly not least, its life saving shelter high on the mountain. One summer storm in 1992 dropped so much snow that 19 people were stranded in the hut without food or fuel. Eventually all were airlifted during a break in the storm by the guides’ mountain rescue helicopter pilot who, in his 20 year career, had already logged over 20,000 hours of flight time, specifically around Cervino’s Aosta Valley.
Over 500 people have died on Cervino, making it the deadliest mountain in the Alps and a few more are lost each year trying to reach its summit. In good years the guides will bring clients up the mountain starting in May and as late as September, though the most successful summit bids typically occur in August. As afternoon snowstorms are common even in summer, the keys to safe climbing are starting early and moving fast.
Approaching Cervino
Having learned that we had only a few good weather days before a low pressure system was predicted, we drove 7 hours from the Dolomites, hiked 6 hours to the hut, arrived in the dark, and planned our summit attempt for 4 AM the next morning. Three humbling moments occurred during the approach hike, although in fact, the entire journey was chock full of humbling moments, so I will mention them for the record. After several hours of failing to keep pace with Andrew’s gargantuan steps, I was forced to hand off my share of the climbing rack weight, which it should be said was minimal compared to the 18 lbs of water we carried. When we reached the fixed ropes at the Whymper Chimney just below the hut as the sun was painting the mountains and rock spectacular colors, I did more than whimper when I realized I lacked the strength to haul my body plus weighty pack up the large ropes my hands could barely grasp. Apparently rope climbing, drawn from military training, is obligatory curriculum in Britain so Andrew was happy to lead these sections, passing the delicate rock climbing challenges off to me.
As I pressed on in the dark to the final chossy terraces leading to the hut, I became aware of smelly crumpled paper. Then I heard a dropping sound from above that no one ever wants to hear. I quickly realized I had inadvertently led us to the back dumping grounds for the hut toilet. Furious hand scrubbing followed when I reached the hut and discovered the “toilet” was in fact a hole in the deck leading directly to the terraces and anyone unfortunate enough to be standing below.
The Route
While the majority of over 200 summit bids (on a good day) are made from the Zermatt side via the famous Hornli ridge, we chose the shorter, more technical (aka steeper) ridge to test our skills and to avoid the crowds. Though the Liongrat ridge is a third of the distance of the Hornli ridge, it takes the guides twice as long to guide, reflecting the difficulty of the steep rock pitches. With 10 fixed ropes, two large fixed chains, one snow cable, extensive bolted anchors, and a massive hanging ladder near the summit, you could say the Liongrat route is exhaustively sewn up with fixed gear and could hardly be considered a real adventure for a true mountaineer. Surely the early mountaineers had a greater propensity for suffering as they spent days or even weeks on the mountain and most often did not give up until they died of exposure, exhaustion, or some heinous accident. When the first ascent of the 14,692 ft peak via the Hornli ridge was finally achieved in 1865 by Edward Whymper, no helicopter mountain rescues were forthcoming when 4 of his party of seven were pulled to their death during the descent. Whymper and two partners survived only because the rope was severed when the others fell. And later, though Carrel had bagged the first ascent of the more technical Italian Liongrat route, eventually the mountain won taking his life in a storm. When other climbers ran out of food or suffered from frostbite, they usually never left their predicament alive, wholeheartedly believing they had nothing more to lose than the bragging rights of being first. While climbing the steep rock faces and ridges in the darkness at 4 am on our summit day, we could only assume those men were of a stronger, more hearty breed, though their persistence often ended in dismal failure. We hoped to avoid repeating such trials.
Summit Morning Long Before Dawn
As we started up the route, wearing headlamps, with the ten guided parties and one other unguided party who hoped to summit that day, we tried to move quickly behind the Italian guides, chewing cigarettes while they soloed the first difficult rock pitches and hauled their clients up behind them. We hoped to glean from them every route finding advantage in the dark early morning hours, but we were quickly dropped, despite the fact that the first three pitches were protected by thick ropes and a fixed chain. Our assumption that two relatively fit, average climbers living a mile above sea level in Colorado should be able to keep pace with relatively less experienced mountaineers was quickly disproved. As their headlamps disappeared in the distance, we found ourselves slowing for route finding, or rather, route losing. When the sun finally rose, we met a Swedish guide from Chamonix whose client was waiting for his wife and her guide (due to the climb’s difficulty each guide is required by law to lead only one client). The guide mentioned knowingly that you can’t pitch out the Matterhorn (meaning partners must climb together to save time instead of making fixed anchors and belaying each other through difficult sections). Fifteen hours later when we stumbled back to the hut in a whiteout, we knew he was right.
Once we had navigated through the initial difficult sections in the dark around buttresses, terraces, slabby faces, and up the fixed chain that led to the ridge, we had less difficulty making our way up the steep Italian ridge. Airy snow sections on the ridge were tricky with only our ice axes as we had been advised crampons were not needed. A time consuming traverse of three pinnacles followed, leading to a snowy steep col and the base of the final summit push. With freezing wind on the ridge and tenuous shelf traverses above thousand foot drop-offs, the strain of concentrating for 7 hours began to wear on us. We were demoralized when the first Italian guide skipped down the knife-edge ridge somehow whistling with a cigarette hanging from his mouth after summiting in only 4 hours. The final blow came, literally, when we made our way across a fixed exposed rope traverse near the summit and the other unguided party (also donning cigarettes) clipped past us while descending. In a moment of sheer bad timing, one of the Italians turned and caught the pick of his ice axe right up my right nostril. I giggle now at the absurdity of the moment, but when blood spewed from my nose, I was quite sure I had just acquired a third nose hole. Carefully I lifted my nose off his ice pick and sustained only minor injuries.
On Top
Enduring all humbling moments, it wonderously happened that we stood, after 7 hours of strenuous climbing and route finding, atop Cervino’s summit on a clear sunny afternoon with a cheery fellow from Madrid. He had climbed the Hornelli Ridge with 200 other people and was equally surprised to be standing on top. The summit area is a several hundred foot long knife edge ridge with a saddle between the two distinct high points. The Italian summit is said to be 6 feet lower than the Swiss Summit, though the Italian Summit is considerably harder to reach. The Italian guides assembled a 20 ft high iron cross on the precarious saddle between the two summits, marking for each climber their success in reaching their goal. A guide later showed me pictures of his daughter who became the youngest person to summit Cervino when he brought her to the top in 4.5 hrs when she was only 7 years old. In the pictures she had climbed to the airy tip of the cross to show she could climb higher than her dad. I suggested she would certainly be the next female guide on the mountain but he shook his head and said in halting English it was too hard. After chatting with other guides, I think he meant it is a hard life, being a guide responsible for the lives of inexperienced clients in all conditions, using your own body weight to protect you both from your quick and certain demise with only one wrong step.
Ice Axe Blunders on the Descent
It is said that the descent for an unguided party on Cervino typically takes as long as the ascent. To save time, the guides lower their clients down the route and then down-climb the hard sections. By staying roped to their clients and avoiding the need to re-organize the rope and rappel from fixed anchors, they can descend very quickly. We were, however, most concerned about saving our necks as the storm clouds blew in quickly and began to obscure our views. Though we knew that moving fast was of utmost importance, our rusty down climbing skills compelled us to use the slower descent method of rappelling. Though bolted anchors were available in places, this method resulted in a 7.5 hr descent time. With 2 hours left to reach the hut, the storm broke and rain, then hail and heavy snow engulfed us with lightning cracking overhead. The whiteout made crossing slabby terraces and finding key navigational points we had previously only experienced in the dark, challenging. We pieced together our vague memories of the earlier pitches and as the stormed worsened we happened upon the buttress that led us to the fixed ropes that descended to the hut. Thrilled with our stroke of luck, we found ourselves a short time later shivering alone in the hut for another night and day. Bored, but happy not to be bivvying in Cervino’s punishing weather, we gathered rainwater and scrubbed the hut clean while waiting for a break in the storm so we could descend. The next afternoon we could occasionally see our descent route through swirling clouds so we made our way down, finding the clouds thickening and becoming swirling snow flurries. Five hours later when we finally reached the rainy, steep, green lowlands above the town, the tinkling cowbells were a welcome sound. We concluded Monte Cervino is a spectacular mountain, and we wish we were more spectacular climbers. We had a chat with the Cervino guides upon our return and while only half sneering at us (proclaiming that the Italian guides are the fastest and best guides on the mountain, of which we were well aware), we were told it only takes experience and familiarity with the mountain to become more efficient.
Tragedy Remembered
Several days later, upon re-climbing the Cosmiques Aerete in Chamonix, the route where Andrew and I met five years ago, we discovered there are worse things than taking your time. Two pitches from the end of the route, a French father passed us short roping (using his own body weight to belay his partner instead of placing protective gear) his eight-year-old son. Soon after, the father got off route and tried to climb a difficult dihedral. In horror, we watched him fall 100 feet, pulling his son down after him. The father died and the small son miraculously survived and was carried off via helicopter with severe injuries. We decided that while proving to ourselves that we could persevere when the route seemed lost and the day grew long, our attitudes toward mountaineering were irreversibly altered. At that moment, we had a hard time even believing Mark Twight’s line, “It doesn’t have to be fun, to be fun”. Neither of us wanted to be in the mountains for a long time. Though we only suffered neck rope burns, sore shoulders and knees, and a few nicks on our shins and noses, our adventuring mantra, “Let the suffering begin!” became “Make the suffering end!” as we watched the father and son being airlifted. We made haste and got off the mountain, taking the telepherique down from the top of the knife edge ridge which is an unusual quirk of climbing in the French alps, where climbers have explored extreme terrain for centuries, but still enjoy the comforts of plush mountain lodges and casual assisted descents.
Reflections
Having arrived at the Cervino hut in the dark, started our ascent in the dark, returned in a whiteout, and descended in a whiteout, our lasting memories of Monte Cervino will be of the sun setting on the Col De Leone, Cervino reflecting its own shadow at sunrise on the sleepy valley, and the sunny warm expansive views from the summit. Of course memories of swirling, blinding snow flurries and freezing windy ridges will remain, and I will never forget the echoing sound of that boy yelling “Papa! Papa!” on that icy mountainside, but spectacular plays of light will continue to shine after all the scars have healed.