Traverse of the Breithorn

With its four summits linked by an interesting looking snow and rock ridge, a traverse of the Breithorn had long been on the agenda and after finding a beautiful photograph in my 'High Mountains of the Alps' bible, it just had to be done this trip.

Leaving a vomit ridden tent at 4am did have a certain appeal about it; perhaps I should have invested in 'Sprayaway' equipment afterall. However, having had only 1 to 2 hours sleep and a tiring 10 hours getting to and climbing Pollux the day before, I really was quite content to lie back and think of.... sick, no, no anything but....

It was only when Newall's attention went from fidgeting, zipping, turning over 36 times, kneeing me in the ribs, zipping some more, kneeling on Steve's leg to unzip the tent and getting out that I realised that I had a climbing partner and I really ought to be getting out of my pit. With face and eyes tight with tiredness I pulled on frozen boots and tried to tighten frozen laces - needless to say it didn't work very well and the gaiters... forget it, solid. Digging ice axes out of the now rock solid snow was also a bit of an effort for that time of the morning. Buried deeply in soft snow the previous evening to secure the tent in case of a storm (not that it was going anywhere with four burlies inside) they had now welded themselves in and took a major effort to extricate.

Roping up under a cold but crystal clear sky and with starlight to guide us Newall and myself wandered woozily off leaving Steve and Mark to slumber some more. I was myself feeling distinctly light headed at this point, no breakfast too ! We were angling across the Glacier di Verra traversing under the ridge that we would latter climb so as to get to the furthest point of the ridge - the Roccia Nera (4075m).

After 30 minutes the boots had defrosted and feet were flapping around inside so a re-tie was required which also gave us the chance to poke food in gob. The pre-dawn glow was in the sky but we were on the wrong side of the mountain to see the sunrise.

"Shall we see if we can top out on the ridge before the sun comes up ?", I asked Newal.

"Oh aye, let's go for it."

I normally can't resist a challenge like this but almost immediately wished I had kept my mouth shut; the 250m was very steep and very icy and altogether not good terrain for tired legs. We made it in the nick of time and were treated to magnificent views across the Monta Rosa massif and Mischabel chain as the sun peeped over a cloudless horizon.

Looking along the ridge we were to traverse showed us the East, Central and West summits stretching away, with rock towers and snow aretes the challenges between them. Best of all not a soul in sight. Way too early for the cable car and strangely no other parties from the Italian huts - fine by me.

The East Summit (4139m) was straightfoward although we wasted time on the descent. The obvious line took us to a stack of tat wedged under a rather too-small-for-me looking boulder, obviously an abseil point. Below that we could see another bunch of coloured cord. No mention in the guidebook of abseils so there must be a way around it. Devious route finding got us down to the lower abseil point but trying to down climb the 50ft smooth rock slab in crampons was pushing it too far. We'd have to drop out our coils and abseil.

Latter on in the day we could look back and see how we could have missed the abseils out altogether; you had to be really devious and be devious in the opposite direction !!

With a full rope length now between us we traversed the snowy col to the base of the first of three rock towers that get you up the central summit. I tried to turn the first tower on the left flank but traversed too far (jesus how many times have I done that !) and therefore elected for the option of climbing straight up over mixed ground (yummy - my favorite) rather than back track. A couple of 'interesting' moves on rock in spikey feet, one of them even with the luxury of a runner, followed by snow and ice work and after 50m I reached what I would loosely term a mountain belay. That is to say no gear, just a body brace behind a boulder - cool.

Newall followed up in good style - thank goodness - and I then managed to continue climbing up to the base of the second tower which I climbed straight through on some good solid Severe moves. Once Newall had got to me again we took in the excess rope so we could move together and so climbed through the easier last tower to arrive at the Central Summit (4159m).

By this point a single party had caught us up. A guide with his client, fresh from the first cable car, cheated badly by joining the route half way along and missing the spectaluar early morning views and easier but none-the-less worthwhile start to the route. An odd way of doing things to my mind.

The solitude of the ridge that we had so far enjoyed was marred somewhat by crowds gathered on the East Summit (4164m). Feeling pleased with ourselves at having done the hard part of the ridge and also feeling suprisingly fit we descended to the col and climbed 300ft up to join the rabble for an obligatory summit photo after nine hours climbing.

A very worthwhile day even if only to see the look of consternation on Newall's face when I happened to mention that we were off route at the rock towers.

Trevor. Sept 99

Derek

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