The thought of the Whymper group reaching the summit of the Matterhorn via the now well travelled Hornli ridge is amazing - the sheer magnitude of the puzzle of the routefinding combined with the gear they had at their disposable makes the success (with all due respect to the members of his party not finishing the descent alive) quite a feat. It was surely enough to fill a day for me and my buddy on Monday.

A San Diego partner currently in Germany and I had discussed plans to climb the Matterhorn a few months ago - with a date set on labor day weekend. The week before, there was a pretty sizably weather system over most of the alps which put fair ammount of snow on the ridge so we decided that we should shift plans to the NW face of Gran Paradiso. As the week came to a close, though, the weather had cleared and the forecast got markedly better with lots of sun forecasted from Thursday afternoon on... back the plan one - Hornli Ridge.

Zermatt is a pretty cool town to spend some time in. If going, the first step is to illegally drive your car all the way into town and wonder why there are no other cars around. No worries for me though - I have the "I" on my license plates at the moment so the Swiss just shake their heads and think "when will the Italians listen". There really are no signs, though, until you are already past where it matters. I turned about without any problems and headed back to Tasch to catch a train back into Zermatt to meet up with Mike.

After a few beers we went back to Tasch (he confessed he had first driven into the town center as well) to sleep and get ready for the route.

Sunday, we got up and were at the train station at a leisurely pace - the approach to the Hornli Hutte is only 700m+.

Mike at the station:


It was a cool time to be in Zermatt since it is the annual festival celebrating the mtn culture of the town. Walking toward the gondola, we came across a group getting ready for something:


the objective. The Hornli ridge is the ridge splitting the sunny and shady face of the Matterhorn.


The approach is just a couple hours if you take the lift... which we did of course. This is the top of the station.


Even the trail signs are perfect in Switzerland!


The approach is actually a great walk in itself.. you can ponder the route which looms above the entire time. You do have to ignore the constant thumping of helicoptors flying people all over the place to do everything from ski to skydive to check out the summit.


Soon enough, you are at the Hornli hut



Not a bad setting for a mid afternoon snack at 3260m. Since you are at the border between CH and IT, you can enjoy traditional Rösti und Eier which I did...


or Pesto


There are just so many objectives in this valley it is amazing. I think there are 14 named peaks just in the Monta Rosa traverse. Here are Castor, Pollux, Briethorn and a few others (I think)


And a few others a bit further north


At the hut, the caretaker is a super sarcastic lady who was giving me the 'you are so full of Sh!t look' when I tried to explain to her that I had left my Club Alpino Italiano card in the car - saving me 8 CHF on the hut price. In the end she gave it to me. The hut food is great, as is usual for these places, but not cheap.. The atmoshphere is a pretty cool - many different groups all the with same objective. You can also do Zmutt ridge from the Hornli hut but no one was - in fact pretty much everyone had a guide. There were 6 or 7 groups without, us among them, but here it is pretty standard. It is really cool that guiding is actually a pretty economically viable profession in the alps. Guides are making the equivilant of 250-800 dollars per day depending on the route (each of the guided clients here were paying about 1000bucks!!!).

We got up at the prescribed 4:30 time for a quick breakfast and started the route at a fixed rope at 5:00 - in a que for about 10mins!

The first part of the route is a series of steps leading to a ramp with short sections of 4th and easy fifth although rarely does it get easier than 3rd class. Here, Mike is traversing the second gendarme on the route about 2/3 of the way to the Solvay hut ('emergencies' only)


The climb stays on the left side of the actual ridge when you are below the Solvay Hut.


The climbing is never hard but never overly easy, either. The rock quality is amazing.

[Click to View Linked Image]

Time wise, the Solvay hut is supposed to be the halfway point for the ascent - just over 4000m - about 800m above the Hornli hut and 400 below the summit. We roped up just after here to pass the most technical part of the climbing (maybe 5.6).


For just having a bit of a dumping of snow, the route was really dry high up. Here we decided to put on the points in the interest of being able to move faster.


At this point, some of the guided groups were descending through. We were about 200m below the summit. The guides really have it dialed into to process - they are served breakfast first so that they can get on the route earlier then they literally pull their clients along gasping for breath, give them 2 minutes on the summit to take a photo and then push them down the route as they downclimb; all the while yelling at them for not being technically sound - which ironically is why there are guides in the first place.

A bit higher, near the summit ridge about 1030.


Along the route there are several fixed ropes..


Mike on the Italian summit (a couple m lower but more impressive)


Me on top


We started the descent at about noon.. a bit late to make it back for the last cable car but not so bad. The descent went pretty slowly for a variety of reasons but became somewhat of a party by the time we passed the Solvay hut. We joined up with a guide and his client who were Russian, a Spainiard and some former Royal Marines. We had a good time trying to figure out where the route was on the descent - it got easier once it was jsut about dark since we had climed that section when it was just about dark that morning. We saw the lights on the Hornli hut as an ever present beacon of where the beer was and continued down using a combination of rapping and downclimbing. It is much faster, as always, to downclimb but with all the ropes we had between us, we developed a pretty good system.

We stepped foot back at the base of the route just after 9pm - 16 hours after we started - pretty slow but successful!

The Brits bought the beers and the hut gaurdian was gracious enough to spend an unplanned night in the Hornli - I resolve someday to learn to sleep better over 3000m - living at sea level doesnt seem to help that though.

After waking up once for the 4:30 climbers revile, we woke up again around 7:00 to sign the summit log...


And then start the walk back down after enjoying watching the moonset over the route.


The Hornli ridge is a true testament to the hardmen of the day. It is by far the hardest via normale I have done. Even with the crowds, the experience is a great one. The views from the top are simply amazing.