The lure of island life is hard to resist…
My ski touring adventure in Switzerland: the storm intensified and my goggles froze
08.01.2024 - 16:26 / theguardian.com
One Thursday last March I emerged from the Jungfraujoch, Europe’s highest train station, and crossed into another world. Inside the station, a guide with a novelty Swiss flag was marshalling a party of Asian visitors. Outside, we were soon on the Jungfraufirn, a small glacier that feeds the Aletsch, the largest glacier in the Alps. Sunlight shone through breaks in the cloud, and the ice, flanked by buttresses of dark rock, ran south for miles. The pitch was gentle and the ungroomed snow looked inviting.
I was on a training course in skihochtouren – high-altitude ski touring –organised by Bergpunkt, a Swiss-German mountaineering school for a book I’m working on about ski mountaineering. Bergpunkt’s guides were multilingual and a visitor without German could, with patience, manage.
Ski touring is an entirely distinct experience from resort skiing. By using “skins” – fabric strips that attach to the base of the ski and provide traction on the snow, and specialised bindings that can release at the heel – tourers can climb hills as well as ski down them. At the top of a climb, you strip the skins, lock down your heels, and then ski in the conventional way. But the real difference with touring is the emotional – and perhaps even spiritual – tenor of the experience. Rather than skiing in managed, groomed and often-crowded resorts, you are among wild mountains, in nature and peace. A multi-day tour, with stays in mountain huts, can feel like an Alpine odyssey. The other side of skiing outside a secured environment is that there are risks, notably avalanches and, on glaciers, crevasses. Beginners should go with guides.
For me, the appeal of ski touring is also the cultural immersion. Among English speakers, the sport is often the preserve of men working in finance or working through a mid-life crisis. My experiences with Alpine natives saw me touring with bus drivers as well as bankers, and while men still outnumbered women there was much less overt machismo.
From Jungfraujoch, we descended to Konkordiaplatz, a plateau at about 2,700 metres where several glaciers meet, before traversing the Grünhornlücke, a pass at 3,273 metres. In cloud, the descent became a chance to practise roped-up downhill skiing: this is a standard technique on glaciers in poor visibility, given crevasses, but challenging. The rope snaps tight at inopportune moments. We emerged below the murk into a grey and spare world and traversed to the Finsteraarhorn hut at 3,048 metres.
Staying in huts – on this trip we also lodged at another one at Konkordia – transforms the ski-touring experience. It means skiers don’t have to carry food, fuel, or tents: carrying a heavy pack can ruin any skiing experience.
But again, the real lure is the
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