Stuart is happy to be up on the Grenz revisiting old territory.
This morning has seen the first of the autumn snow fall. Of course up here there is no autumn. A bishop visiting the 900 year old Monastery at the Grand Saint Bernard Pass, 2469 metres, home to the St Bernard dogs, once said that the Alps was nine months of winter and three months of summer. That's a pretty accurate assessment of the Alpine weather at that location and anywhere else in the Alps at that altitude.
So this morning, as predicted, there was a light snow shower going on around the hut. We finished breakfast and set off up the band of rock that tuns for several hundred metres behind the hut and trails slowly upwards to the south and forming one edge of the Grenz Glacier, nick named 'the man eater'!
Crevasses on the mighty Grenz
On reaching the glacier we donned harnesses and helmets and after roping up set off onto the glacier to continue in a southerly direction so that we could acclimatize, by gaining as much height over the 3,000 metre mark,where mountaineers that have not been at altitude for some time, can sometimes start to feel light headed as the oxygen level reduces slightly. The other reason was to carry out a reconnaissance of our proposed route to cross over to the Italian side, at the Lisjoch pass, 4,151 metres, just to the East of Liskamm (one of the 4,000 metre plus summits in the area).
As we continued up the Grenz we could here Serac falling onto the Grenz. These columns or towers of ice have been thawing all summer and as they had become more unstable. They sounded like they were falling off the rocky ledges of the Schalbetterflue, a steep rock band on the other side of the Glacier. The occasional rumble and crashing of shattered ice echoed down the glacier.
View from outside the Monte Rosa Hutte that evening
We climbed steadily for another hour or so before reaching a height of 3,330 metres. Now we were just below the hardest point of our proposed route. Here guide books advise moving to the south side of a band of rock at 3,700 metres. The crevasse field is more 'intense' at this point as the ice is steeper and serac's form. As we began to plan the best route up the view ahead of us began to disappear, firstly into a mist and then a white out as we realised that a snow storm was gathering pace as it came down the glacier and began to envelope us. The snow was settling fast and before we knew it, it was covering the glacier in a thick white coat. Deciding that the weather appeared to be deteriorating for some time to come and that this was not a passing shower we turned and headed back towards the hut taking a slightly different line in order to help make up our minds about a fast route up the following day.
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The snow continued to follow us down to the hut and we arrived back at our accommodation later that afternoon in poor visability but happy that we had acclimatized well so far and found a good route for the day ahead.
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