2000: Haute Route Verbier Version - sweet memories

The Dream...or: Mission Possible

Route: Argentière - Refuge d'Argentiere - Cabane du Trient - Champex. Bus + train + bus. Verbier - Cabane du Mont Fort - Cabane de Prafleuri - Cabane des Dix - Cabane des Vignettes - Schönbielhütte - Zermatt. 28 April - 7 May 2000

Photos from the trip you'll find HERE

GPS track for the Haute Route Verbier, click HERE 

Dream Team 2000: Tore M. Hagen, Cecilie Schjerven, Øyvind Tufto, Bjørn Lytskjold

My first REAL Haute Route took place in 2000. Well, the very first attempt was way back in 1986, but both weather, blisters & equipment made it into a fairly short and tricky exprience. In 2000 it all turned out very much better. Tonight I even found my 'journal' from that trip. Here it comes:

D R Ø M M E N (The Dream)
- or why not: Mission Possible
Haute Route 28 April - 7 May 2000

Dreams …, one of those I’ve had for years was about the Alps - or rather ski-touring the Alps: Skis sliding over good snow. Deep blue sky. Stunning scenery. A fine bunch of friends… However, sitting here in Chamonix in late April does not quite match. Well, the good friends are here - Øyvind (brother-in-law), his good friend Cecilie and Tore (buddy since university days) - but skis & backpacks are probably sent to Gdansk instead of Genève. No packs, no skis, no boots - and it’s raining. Looks more like a nightmare this one.

Then Bernard shows up - my faithful glaciologist-friend from the Polar Institute days - with his big beard and good French smile: “Welcome to the Alps!” He has driven all the way from Grenoble just to have a meal with us before we leave for the hills. Now he rushes to the nearest phone, calls up the airport and acts our Alpine Mountain Guide: “Mademoiselle, the packs and skis - very important for my clients - if not ...” For the next hours he’s calling again and again. And it works – the dirty Genève-taxi outside our pension next morning is the nicest car I've ever seen.

The dream of mine has a famous name – Haute Route, the High Level Road– runs from Chamonix/Mont Blanc (France) to Zermatt/Matterhorn (Switzerland) and starts with a cable-car. Up into the clouds. At the top station the drizzle is gone, here it’s snowing gently. Snow and fog and white-out. First cabin, Refuge d’Argentière, is 4 hours up the glacier. Skins on the skis, skis on , pack on – then climbing slowly, slowly. It’s blowing up here now, fairly cold in the face – but the wind has a good effect on the fog, suddenly it’s pushed down below us. For the first time we see the big, huge, enormous mountains that surround us. And find the cabin, naturally packed with French Alpinists. Food and wine on the table, served ruff and efficient in the big room – then at 22:30: House-generator off – lights gone – everyone switched on their headlamps – time for bed. Fairly chaotic scenery, with 40 glow-worms in each dormitory trying to find our spot in the huge bunk beds.

The morning air outside is good medicine after 8 hours in the closed sleeping room. Not to mention the view! It’s sun out there, shining on some of the tallest mountain walls in the Alps. Breakfast is fairly quiet, most people have left already. Early risers suddenly get an other meaning; the first ones must have started at 5:00. We are proud to be out at nine, starting the long, long climb up “cracked” Glacier du Chardonnet. The landscape is simply breathtaking, sharp & snow-covered 4000 metres granite peaks scraping the sky. Topped with the thin air up here it’s really too much. The Alp-Snails, below our big packs, here we come creeping!

Climbing is one thing – quite different are the downhills. And the one coming now is a real steep one. “No problem”, is the French comment, “it’s a fixed rope here. But be careful! It’s a little bit short”. Wish I had skis and technique like them, not my far too long telemark-touring-ski and the three-pin binding. Hanging in the rope feels safe enough – the heavy heartbeats come just below the bottom end! Safe down on the next glacier it’s time for a long lunch break - a bit shaky - and very, very proud and content.

Cabane du Trient is a real pearl – what a cabin! Now doubt, we have arrived Switzerland now: Granite walls, neat red & white window shutters – and a big terrace overlooking a fantastic landscape. Some names are odd though: Aiguille (“needle”) de Pissoir, wonder how that naming took place. We take advantage of our early landing. The kilo of smoked salmon Øyvind has carried is sliced and served with bread to all arriving skiers. “The Crazy Norwegians” is about to be a set phrase on Haute Route. The evening sneaks gently upon us, I feel how this friendly cabin takes a big chunk of my soul.

Cabane du Trient begs us to stay, but we have to act as busy … Early up, café au lait, white bread & marmalade, out and down, down, down. On the rock hard morning crust the first part is a new, real challenge - it’s so steep here! First down the crevassed Glacier du Trient, then with crampons and iceaxe along a fixed rope up the super steep couloir to Col des Ecandies. What am I doing here actually? But like yesterday, another happy ending: Val d’Arpette opens up gently and leads us to the lark forest way down there. This is what skis are made for, this is pure joy and pleasure. I know very well why I am here! We are going so low today that the we’ll meet the spring and summer, but before that: Long lunch break! The setting is perfect: Snow covered terrain and a tiny spot of grass next to a creek. Skis & clothes off and jump in. Coooold, but good: First wash for some day. Down in Champex the beer-drinking quartet feels like the cleanest and luckiest on the Continent. Then it's time to move on to catch the bus down to the train station in Orsières. For sure we have picked a very slow way to get to Verbier. The first train takes us 5-6 km down to Sembrancher. The next one some more 5-6 km to Le Châble, with bus connection up to Verbier. Never have the two sleepy side lines running this service seen more chaos created by so few! Despite being the only one on board, never going further than two stations, having eternities of time between connections - we nearly forget wallets, crack my camera and pulled the emergency break. No doubt, our quartet is made for the high altitudes, the lowland challenges belong to others! 

Verbier is a famous ski resort, in our context it is just a cable-car-station. We get a touch of what the place could be, a long lost friend of Cecilie’s family shows up - serving good stories and a beer. Then up, up, up again with the telepherique, into the snow and our good rhythm. Cabane du Mont Fort is another nice, old Swiss cabin, unfortunately trapped by ski lifts. Indoor, however, the Trient-atmosphere is present, as well as “old” en-route-friends. Strange, but we seem to get along best with the odd guys; Jeremy from New Zealand and Samuel from Belgia, not the cool French Alpinists studying climbing guides and mountain magazines. A very joyful evening with enough red whine! To describe a trip like this is close to hopeless, so why do it? Well, the trip gave me so much that I just have to let it out. Think I stop the detailed description here, even though the next five days were packed with just the best. For the record I just list the huts we staid at: Prafleuri (fantastic hut owner Babette. Creaking barrack-beds and vomiting marked the night), Dix (perfect terrace for beer & sun & smoked salmon. And a very, very strickt and bossy hut warden), Vignettes (the excellent hut warden Jean-Michel. The cliff-hanging toilet. Don't look how far the toilet paper goes if you have vertigo) and Schönbiel (superfriendly hut keeper Rosmarie. To bad to leave a place like hers. A big terrace so close to Matterhorn that you may nearly touch it). In charming, busy and touristic Zermatt we staid at Hotel Bahnhof (friendly staff, super dormitory in the attic, big help-yourself-kitchen in the basement. Clean, clean, clean).  

The dream - I was living in it. I know we have many nice places to ski back in Norway, but: The mix of the powerful Alpine landscape - La France, La Suisse, Italia - the cabins, the people up there in the snow, the warm, warm weather, the thin air, the bloody downhills - and of course our incredible joyful quartet - infamous for the looooooong lunch breaks, the strange ski equipment (“Here come the purists! Look, leather boots!”), a lively & proud, blond woman, smoked salmon, creeks-swimming and numerous bottles of wine … Mon Dieu! Mama mia!

What about some “expedition facts”, like highest peak climbed? Pigne d’Arolla was our top. Relying on a heavy snow fall during last winter (?) and some jump attempts we might have reached 3800 m. The map says 3796. Anyhow - it’s a small peak compared to neighbors. But a very nice and useful name - we used it frequently instead of cheers: Arolla! Works very well.

 The Haute Route variant we took is far from extreme, but definitely demanding around the sharpest corners. Keywords are steep - next is slow moving. 8 days of skiing did not bring us many kilometers east into Switzerland, but brought us rather close to a good expedition rhythm. 8 more days would have helped …

The weather tried to stop us in the very beginning - fortunately when we were luggage-less in Chamonix. I guess it was only to make us appreciate our sunny expedition better. The most serious stop-attempt we had en route was food poisoning… Very annoying in general, combined with climbing it is a true pain: No food kept = no energy generated = very slow progress! Fortunately two of four were always standing, in that way we carried each others equipment! Tore & I carried for Øyvind & Cecilie on Wednesday, Thursday it was the other way around.

Snow conditions were generally on the soft side. The tuff French guys left the cabins like 4-5 in the morning - with head lamps on - to enjoy the hard crusty morning snow. Soft sleepers like us got soft snow - and sunny, long lunch breaks …

The cabins - - - I wonder how the Club Alpin Suisse actually started? Perhaps with some guys that were offered some very cheap land. The cabins are put on the most incredible, rocky places. The most extreme we visited is called Cabane des Vignettes, probably build for “men only”. At least that’s what Cecilie felt - “they don’t want me to be here. They ignore me totally, guess I disturb their macho image”. The rather huge, two stories granite building was sitting on a cliff at 3160 meters, surrounded by crevassed glaciers. A trip to the simple “free fall” toilet was a very exposed experience (and for sure: Nobody never ever had to empty it!). Cabins like this are meant for guys that get along well, at least it’s suitable with a friendly attitude asleep: To find bunk beds for less then 10 persons on each “level” is very hard. Earplugs are a must, claustrophobia not needed, your neighbors are close, ceiling is low, it’s pit dark and the window very well closed (in this way the fresh - but thin - air is kept out, to create a really thick night-atmosphere …). Dinners are served around 19:00 in a friendly and ruff manner: Soup, main dish and dessert - on the same plate please. A big and good and long meal - and they sell wine. Tough guys stick to water up here - we mixed with the Kiwis and ended up with colourful bottle collections - “Jaban, jaban!” said Jeremy, that’s Norwegian in his head. ”Arolla”, was our reply. Monsieur Macho at the end of the table looked slightly confused over his water mug.

The incredible cabins along our Haute Route are sitting patiently up there between the giant peeks and glaciers: Refuge d’Argentière - Cabane du Trient - Cabane du Mont Fort - Cabane de Prafleuri - Cabane des Dix - Cabane des Vignettes - Schönbielhütte. I feel they wait for roles in a new dream, a dream that will enable me to do new discoveries in this unique part of Europa: Of landscapes, people - and myself.

Bjørn 2000