With Freddy being in the United States for two weeks, I took the opportunity to reach out to two women who I am hoping to become closer with as ski season draws near. Through a sorority acquaintance, I was connected with a few women who are also enthused by high mountain adventures: 

Helen, a native German, took a year off between high school and college to work as a Ski Instructor at Lenzerheide. Falling in love with the place, she stayed in Zurich for school and is now a high school English Teacher with better grammar than me (or is it “I”?). 

Larissa, a Zurich native, met Helen when they were both working in Lenzerheide. She lives right above the Transa outlet, which means she must have good restraint to not frivolously purchase outdoor gear at (for Swiss standards) discounted prices. She is also a runner, skier, and is back in school to earn another degree in Economics.  

We finally nailed down the weekend of September 10/11 to scramble up high together. The conundrum of the Swiss hut system is, on one hand, Swiss people stereotypically plan really far in advance, so many huts by popular routes are full by the time the ECMWF has come to a reasonable conclusion on what the weather will do on any given day. Alas, many of our initial plans had to be scrapped, but Helen found us places in Cabane Tracuit to do the Bishorn, a 4000 meter peak directly above Zinal. 

I used the SAC website to understand what the tour would be like and what gear I need to bring. We’d split this into two days, taking transit to Zinal on Saturday and hiking up to the hut. On Sunday, we’d tag the summit and trudge down 2500 meters back to town. We were crossing a glacier so we brought a rope and glacier gear.

The Swiss Alpine Club’s website is a treasure trove of information, a great resource for routes, hazards, booking huts, everything. Due to my German proficiency, or lack thereof, I must rely on Google Translate to parse route descriptions. In German, they call Alpine tours that tend to involve easy climbing and/or glacier travel as “Hochtouren.” Google translates that to “Full Speed.” This cracked me up as the last thing I'm doing on a high Alpine peak is going "Full Speed."

The hike up from Zinal was faster than expected - we reached the hut at 5 pm with enough time to do some glacier rescue practice before having an excellent spaghetti dinner. The Cabane Tracuit is a really nice hut; the dining room has floor to ceiling windows looking out on Pigne de la Le, Grand Cornier, Dent Blanche, and the Zinalrothorn. It felt very special to see the mountains come in and out of fog as the sun set pink hews on the snowy glaciers. It was time for bed in our 20 person dormitory. 

We had a reasonable wake up call of 5 am. We got on the glacier before sunrise, weaving through the labyrinth of crevasses in a line of headlamps from the 50 other people doing the same route as us. We started up the final tongue of the glacier to the summit as the sky turned purple.

<Author's interjection> Something else I want to call out is MeteoSwiss’s overloaded term of “Frische Brise.” When I first saw them associating a 30-40 km/hr wind as “Fresh Breeze,” I also thought that must be a translation error. With more digging, I found that MeteoSwiss uses the Beaufort scale of measuring wind, the “Fresh” monaker symbolizing a wind speed between “Moderate” and “Strong” breeze. 

I bring this up because as I looked out towards Val d’Anniviers, in awe with my surroundings, this bloody Fresh Breeze picked up, swirling the freshly fallen snow and blasting it in our faces. The sun still hadn’t reached us, and I was freaking cold.  Maybe it is the amount of washing machine detergent commercials that use the term “Fresh,” but I really think it is the wrong term for the conditions it is describing!

We summited all 4,153 meters, and I could not feel my hands. I was wearing all the clothes I had brought. I wish I could have enjoyed that moment of triumph, my first all-woman powered mission in Switzerland, feeling pride in my own and my partners’ abilities. Even musing at the Weisshorn North Ridge and the potential for new adventures in the future. The sun finally thermally caressed my flushed face. But I still couldn’t. All I could think about was my frozen hands beginning to thaw, the tingling fire that was ensuing felt so painful as I cringe-smiled for a selfie. 

So here is my final German lesson of the day: As I described to Larissa and Helen how my hands felt, Larissa said “Oh I know that feeling - Kuhnagel!” My A2-let’s-out-a-huge-sigh-of-relief-after-every-German-interaction German is no match for Larissa’s Swiss German. She explained that Kuhnagel translates to “Cow’s Nail,” but refers to frostbite or Screaming Barfies in Schweizer Deutsche. This really tickled me because (1) how is it across languages we come up with such unique terms for the same thing and (2) out of context, both don’t make much sense!  

We descended quite fast, getting back to the hut before 10 am. So we spent time practicing crevasse rescue and drinking hot chocolate before heading down to the bus home. We chatted the entire time. Needless to say, it was a great weekend, and I hope to have more like this! Lucky for me, Larissa and Helen brought their nice dSLRs on the trip, so I’m sharing some with y’all!

All the photo credit to Larissa and Helen!!