Saas-Fee to Zermatt Ski Tour

1/20/2010
Saas-Fee to Zermatt, Switzerland ski tour
Ski touring in the Swiss Alps is a spectacular adventure and experience. It’s a big day to go from Saas-Fee to Zermatt on skis, especially on-sight. I needed to rack up a little more mock guiding time for my upcoming AMGA exam, so Justin helped be a great bro and helped me out as an acting client.
We rented our gear in Saas-Fee and the local guide’s office helped me out with a loaner shovel since I didn’t bring one to Europe. Other than that, we had the rest of the requisite equipment except for a map. The Swiss maps are among the best in the world. We went back to our hotel room and planned the route, AMGA style and no skimpy plans.
Boarding the tram and then jumping onto the Alpine Train, we were excited to get going on our journey. They stopped the train at the half-way point and we jumped off. Several other people tried to get off the train and everyone else yelled “no” to them, and they promptly got back on board since this definitely was their stop. The tunnel runs through some culverts to an electronic door. We stopped there and got geared up.
We emerged from the culverts and it was a very bright bluebird day. Looking at my log book I got our bearings and figured out which direction we needed to go. I did a quick assessment of the snowpack to ski down the first couple hundred feet that ran out onto the glacier. It was good and stable, so we made our first turns. Once on the glacier we went into roped glacier mode. The local UIAGM guide, Peter, told us that the snow bridges were not obvious and were also weak and that it was easy to punch through into a crevasse.
Justin and I split the rope into equal amounts and we space ourselves out. The snow was completely untouched. There were no tracks whatsoever and the distances were large. The peaks were beautiful and there were no sounds except for a light breeze. The sun was strong, but a storm was coming in and would be enshrouded soon, so we soaked it up as much as we could.
We snuck around the corner of a ridge and found ourselves looking at the final skin up the next 1000m to Adler Pass. I knew we needed to stay a couple hundred meters away from the right since there was a large rock escarpment and we could be hit with a spontaneous rock volley, even though it didn’t seem likely since there was no active rock fall. However, I’ve seen large rock faces slough off several times in the past while in Chamonix. So, I started heading up a nice graded slope and promptly punched through the snow into a small crevasse. My skis were not parallel to the crevasse and I popped though easily. I yelled out to Justin, “heads up” and I fell into my armpits. Being able to lean back while falling in I was able to pretty much catch myself with my left arm on top of the snow and stem my knees against the walls of the slot to prevent going in any further. I told Justin, “take, take” meaning to tension the rope. He was already lying down in hockey stop position, so it wasn’t like I was going anywhere. He snapped off a couple of photos and I pulled myself out and we continued on.
We got out into the middle of the glacier where 10,000 soccer fields could be placed and made sure of our next bearing. We cruised up the Adler Pass though incandescent bled glacier fields. The last 20m to gain the saddle were a bit taxing since the wind was cold and biting. We also had to kick out of our skis and boot up that last section since the wind slab was so hard.
We stopped near the rocks at the saddle, put on another jacket layer, took the skins off our skis, got some hot tea from our thermoses, ate some food and looked out over the 3100m descent that fell away into the Zermatt valley far below the Matterhorn. The clouds were now building and the forecast was for a fresh 3-5cm of snow. We had good bearings and map coverage until we reached the Zermatt ski area(s), and made a horrible assumption, but I’ll get to that later.
From Adler Pass the first few hundred meters were icy and then gave way to a breakable crust on about a 46 degree slope until it ran out to lower angle terrain and higher quality of skiing. Another few hundred feet below that, the cash box lay waiting. The snow became stupendous and we were able to carve out great turns for 1500m on the glacier. Monster hanging glacier rose above and sat idly on top stone yet uncovered from the last ice age.
We dodged through intermittent moraine rock fields, and then finally, the snow turned into worsening conditions at about the halfway mark. We were able to follow our route for the most part, but the glacier became increasingly dry and would not only be poor skiing on ice, but would also be a potential fall hazard. We deviated slightly and the angle was too shallow to ski in the fetches where the snow was deeper. We would up skinning downhill a bit, then ran into a cliff band. We navigated it as the sun went down and wound up in the valley floor that a small creek ran down and into the ski area that we were aiming for.
Once we finally reached the ski area we were dumbfounded to find out that the only way to get from our location within the ski area to Zermatt was by train. We found a restaurant and an old man answered the door. In his broken Swiss English he was able to tell us to follow an old trail that would take us into a small village.
By headlamp we skied this trail and gained the village. From there we could only find a footpath that was located on the opposite side of the ski area. The sign for the footpath said “CLOSED.” We hiked back up hill and found a bar that was closed to ask for directions. A lady and two men opened their electronic digital locking doors and told us by really broken English that “no ski to Zermatt…trail…yes.”
We skied back to the “CLOSED” sign and made our way into Zermatt! We stopped at a restaurant and grabbed a Hot Bailey’s and Hot Chocolate and some dinner. Then we took a taxi back to Saas-Fee!
I was so psyched to be able to get in a route like this. It was a big day and well worth the trip out here in and of itself, let alone to be able to compete in one of the World's biggest and best ice competitions.