Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it might have been more sensible to attempt a less ambitious mountain than the Dom des Mischabel as my first, un-guided, “grown-up” 4,000m peak. The “Dom” is the third highest mountain in the Alps, the second highest in Switzerland and apparently the highest mountain entirely in Switzerland. It is known for being a long, demanding and committing climb although not particularly technical demanding. It comes with some “objective” dangers – mountaineer speak for things that will kill you about which you can do nothing. These include towering seracs and cavernous crevasses. The only goal I had set for myself was to return home safely and anything beyond that I would consider a bonus – successfully summiting I considered a remote possibility. I was pretty scared and intimidated by this project.
Duncan, Colin and I set off from the village of Randa, close to Tasch to walk to the Dom Hut. Our first challenge was simply lifting our backpacks onto our backs. As the hut is currently not officially open we would be staying in the “winter room” which means we needed to take sleeping bags, food, stoves as well as out skis, ski boots and so on. Fortunately, none of us fell over as otherwise we would certainly not have been able to stand up again.
The route to the hut took a little over 4.5 hours and was really tough featuring some open pastures, then woodland before a steep rocky ascent with via feratta style cables and ladders and the odd patch of snow. There was nothing particularly technically demanding but 1,500m of ascent with a dirty great pack was hard work.
The route was really well-signed and we eventually arrived at the hut. There was a rising sense of panic as each door we tried was locked but we eventually found the entrance to the winter room. It consisted of nine bunks and was pretty basic but compared to sleeping outside, was pretty welcoming. Colin lit the stove and we made water from snow and collected snow melt from the roof and enjoyed spicy uncle bens rice in warm and glorious sunshine. I was pretty happy just to have reached the hut.
The plan had been to get up at 3:30 am but as Duncan was snoring so I put in ear plugs and then failed to hear my alarm so we did not leave the hut until 5:00am. Colin set us up nicely for the day with bacon wraps for breakfast.
We roped up and headed up the glacier without incident – no crevasses were visible and the mountain did not throw any rocks at us. We reached the Festijoch which is a rocky ride which separated “our” glacier from the one that would take us to the Dom. We had to climb over it and I lead this and it was not tough, I felt confident and was able to ensure the safety of Colin and Duncan behind me. We reached the top without issue and were met with a breath-taking view of the main route to the Dom and the surrounding peaks – things now felt a little more serious. I was pretty pleased with progress.
We roped up, Duncan in the front, Colin in the middle and me at the end. We chose this line-up on the basis that if Duncan or Colin fell in a crevasse I was probably best placed to get them out and being at the back, I was less likely to fall in. Well that’s what I told them!
Duncan was sensibly cautious and I wonder how I would have felt if I was in the front – it must have been pretty scary. There was plenty of snow and so there were no obvious signs of imminent death so after much prodding of the snow with ski poles we finally began to make progress on the glacier. Of course, we will never know how close we were to plunging to our death!
Guides seem to be generally relaxed about crevasses but they really don’t like seracs (big, towering ice formations that get pushed up by the movement of the glacier and then like to fall over randomly on top of unsuspecting mountaineers). The Dom is famous for some pretty serious seracs and we gave them what I hoped was a suitably wide berth and fortunately they behaved themselves and stayed put.
It was pretty easy going up the glacier and we made slow but steady progress. The weather was good, the conditions ideal and even the high winds of earlier seemed to be reducing. As we reached the top of the glacier we swung right for the final ascent on skis before putting on crampons and heading for the summit.
We were doing much better than I had ever hoped for and everything had gone really well, and conditions were great. We passed an altitude of 4,000m, another milestone and I started to believe we were actually going to summit and was really excited. We began to cross the main North Face of the Dom to attain the ridgeline on an easy pitched traverse across relatively soft and accommodating snow. There were seracs above and below us and we would have to pick our way through but it was all looking good and the risks seemed manageable to me.
The moment I had allowed myself to believe that summitting was a possibility it seemed that Colin and Duncan, decided they had had enough and wanted to turn back. They were concerned about the state of the snow and the risk of a fall and then sliding over the serac cliff below us as well as potentially serac falls from above.
We had agreed a traffic light system as everyone has a different tolerance to perceived exposure and risk. Green is “all is fine, carry on”, Amber is “I am starting to get nervous, we should think about making some changes” and Red is “I am really unhappy, a change of plan is mandatory.” At this particular juncture I was on green and Duncan and Colin were on red. I was pretty surprised by their decision and as we were only 400m or less from the summit, I perceived the risks to be relatively low and I was pretty upset that I would have to go through this all over again at some point. But I did not argue or challenge them even though I desperately wanted to and we agreed to turn back. I had to put my disappointment to one side as the next challenge was to get back down safely.
We tried skiing roped up but with a long rope between us we kept skiing over the rope and I was terrified we were going to slice it in half then be really screwed. We took the rope off and skied down without incident. We then had to descend the rock Fesitjoch and it took me a long time to find a belay point I was comfortable with but once we got past the first pitch the rest of the descent was easy, even enjoyable. A fine ski back to the hut and then a quick snack before the longest ever walk back to the valley which seemed to go on for ever. We finally got back to the car some 15.5 hours after leaving the hut that morning and I was completely broken having bonked on the way down as I had effectively eaten and drunk very little during those 15 hours.
Even though we did not summit there were many successes from the trip.
We returned safely to our loved ones
We did not make any major mistakes on the mountain (at least none that we were aware of)
We got very close to summiting a pretty serious mountain and had an incredible experience
We worked really well as a team together throughout and returned as good as friends as always
We certainly developed more experience and confidence as mountaineers
Epilogue: I had told Catie that if she had not heard from us by 3:00pm she should begin to get worried. As we had limited signal at times and I was so focused on getting down safely I forgot to call her to let her know we were safe. Catie was on the point of calling air glacier helicopters to go and look for us when I finally noticed her missed calls. Catie was understandably a little cheesed off. I definitely will make and execute a better “emergency plan” next time.
Expeditions 