Having failed to get our act together for the Haute Route for all sorts of reasons, and having booked a hotel in Zermatt that wouldn’t let us cancel without full payment (!), we decided to go and ski in Zermatt anyhow. This turned in to quite an exciting prospect as only Dawn out of our group had skied there before…
Our first objective was the Breithorn, a 4164m peak that easily reached by ski. Or so we thought! Thinking it was an easy tick we set about scaling it straight after arriving in Zermatt. We left the top lift station at nearly 2pm. Needless to say, this was a tad late for unacclimatised muppets like us! Dawn and David found it hard going… The south facing slope was covered in a fresh thin layer of powder, and being a south facing and a very sunny aspect, underneath that powder was bullet hard glacial ice! We quickly had to use of harscheisen (ski crampons) to continue to make progress skinning up the slope. Soon after that even these were not enough. It was at this point that Dawn and David bailed. Leaving Laetitia, Rachel, and I to switch from ski-crampons to boot-crampons and ice axes. This coupled with the altitude was making me breath (gasp) for air like a steam train. It was hard work. But we all made it. Hooray! 🙂
Next it was time to switch back to skis and start the long long descent back to Zermatt.
Given our late start, and the tough work gaining the summit, we were well past the closure time of the ski lifts. So we had the entire descent to ourselves. Some of the pistes were being groomed ready for tomorrow’s skiing. It must have been annoying for even the first people off the lifts to see three sets of tracks already carved in to the freshly groomed runs!
Rachel, Laetitia, David, and Dawn waiting for the ski shuttle bus in Zermatt 
Approaching the Breithorn (4164m) 
David, Dawn, Laetitia, and Rachel skining up the Breithorn 
Rachel and Laetitia on the summit (4164m) of the Breithorn 
A selfie of Laetitia and Pete on the summit (4164m) of the Breithorn 
Laetitia and Rachel enjoying the long descent back to Zermatt on empty pistes – the Breithorn if the highest peak on the left
The next day was a bit cloudy, but we set about trying to ski as many of the Zermatt pistes as we could in a single day. It was full speed ahead! 🙂
