"It did not want to make me write poetry or sketch, but my God, I certainly didn't want it to end. This Zen topping, perfect spot on Earth, was mine, for an endless moment."
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I'm quite sure Zürich is a great city but I wasn't about to find out. Not when I have the Swiss Alps to play in. With a 48 hour layover, the heights of the land and the time at hand weren't about to sync up but I was going to give it my best go.
In my imaginary plane I flew around Zürich with Google Earth and found an impressive massif to zoom in on and crash. I don't fly the Google plane well but I'm getting better. My striking point was Mt. Toedi. With a rail line leading to a trail head in Linthal, numerous on-line maps and accessible mountain cabanas, it was looking like a good place to go and then it became the perfect place to go as swinging down from the Toedi massif was a glacier.
I've never hiked a glacier. The snow flows encountered in Romania were tricky enough but that didn't seem to compute in the mindless calculation of underestimation. I've read a few encounters by mountain trekkers of the perils of glaciers and their beauty too, but in no way was I skilled enough to tackle a glacier successfully. Again, mindless underestimation blinded by the call of the summit.
Gear wise, I added my gators and street crampons which was a bit like preparing for a hurricane by getting a new umbrella. Ice ax? 2” crampons? No way that would get through airport security and checking such equipment is risky for working flight crews. I had to hope the umbrella would hold.
In usual fashion, I was off the plane, in the hotel, shower, gear up and off I went. The train ride up to Linthal demonstrated the precise Swiss rail system. Trains started, ran and stopped with a robotic smoothness of purpose. Timing was everything and expected in a country known for making time an art. Oddly, nothing seemed rushed nor slowed. I was greeted with spectacular Swiss views of green pastures and valleys encased by towering cliffs and ridges. The dark wood barns and alpine houses with thatched roofs interrupted the green pastures on occasion. All played their rolls in a well rehearsed poetic display of beauty.
A few stops from Linthal, an African man sat next to me. In a country that strays little from European Caucasian, he was delightfully out of context. His right cheek had the characteristic scar many African men have as a right of passage from boy to man but it wasn't the same scar I've seen in Nigeria, Ghana or Senegal. This one was straighter with a more downward angle. I asked him in my horrible German where he was from. He asked me where I was from in America, in English. My better French won out and I found he was a refugee from Somalia. He's been in Switzerland for a year and misses his family.
He continued but I didn't pay attention. This was useless small talk as the train was already going through some of God's better country and I couldn't imagine the ride ending up in Newark. Switzerland took this gentleman in as a refugee from Somalia, placed him square in the middle of one of the most beautiful spots on earth and was probably living in a Swiss chalet for all I cared. I couldn't work enough life times to manage a Swiss anything at the base of some of the most dynamic mountains on earth, and yet this guy wins life's lottery. He misses his family? I love my family too, but if a UN rescue team came to Brooklyn and moved me to nowhere Switzerland, I'd learn “goodbye” in all three spoken languages of said country. In fact, I already do. I'll send a postcard.
Linthal is the last stop on the train before the Glarus Alps take over the valley. At 3:45pm, I had about five hours of sunlight and maybe a bit less once the sun slipped behind the mountains. The village is small and it didn't take me long to get my barrings and start off towards the trail head. I stopped by a little convenience store and picked up another bottle of water and a detailed terrain map of Mt. Toedi. The maps I had from the Internet were similarly good but one can't have enough maps to consult with. The typical Swiss village of Linthal was adorned with small churches, cascading germaniums and residents living the mountain village life of tranquility. That was until a Subaru WRX-STI with mods blatted by me with the flat four at full power.
There is a sinister bit to Switzerland. They hide everyone's money, they charge an arm and a leg for plentiful chocolate and they are a neutral country with an air force. The government and most of the people despise cars but yet they have some of the most impressive tuning shops in the world that make some of the hottest cars perform like mad and look deranged in the best way possible. The tranquil life may be disturbed briefly by a hooligan from time to time, but I loved it, especially the down shift and turbo blow-by once the WRX got to the tight bend down the way.
At my hurried human pace, I still was able to take in the views of exactly what you would expect from a mountain valley in Switzerland. Post cards don't lie but they don't allow you the sounds of rushing mountain streams and Swiss cow bells echoing off the cliff faces exposed over the millenniums. Afternoon clouds were broken apart by the peaks and their debris scattered as they fell over the cliff faces, dissipating before the valley. Farmers were busy cutting their green fields of grass and gathering hay for the winter to keep the cow bells ringing during the coldest of days.
After about 6km the main road ended at Tierfehd. A gondola provided service to the Mutsee alpine lake. Perhaps a better choice than what I was about to attempt, but my goal was Toedi. The slow incline to Tierfehd turned steep quickly but I was still making good time up the trail. The bubbling alpine creek in Linthal became a raging river with deep gorges and crashing waterfalls. The trail put me in the middle of it all. The most impressive view coming from the exit of a 1908 tunnel. This lead to a two tier narrow bridge crossing the steepest gorge on the trail.
Reaching Hinter Sand, the sun was just above the imposing Toedi massif enough to display a brilliant green meadow filled with what must have been the happiest herd of cows. Their bells sounded their contentedness. The gravel road ended at proper Swiss farm house. The trail took another steep incline, working it's way to the next high valley eclipsed by the 11,000ft ridge lines.
Rather easy going at first between the ridges, the light was disappearing fast and no moonlight to speak of to help things out. The trail markers were well placed and newly painted, making things tolerable. Leaving the high plateau by the rushing stream, the trail went straight up and darkness fell fast. I put my headlight on and remembered I forgot to replace the batteries from New Hampshire trek. No matter really. I had my tent. I also had my goal and that was the Grunhornhutte, some 2,000ft in elevation away. I had great hope in the Energizer bunny powering my headlight.
I'm not a fan of night hiking. You can't see the views. Unless I'm in a situation with a full moon and clear skies like in Spain weeks previous, there's no reason to go night hiking unless you must get somewhere. Which was exactly the situation I was in. My view consisted of about 15 feet in front of me, a well used trail (mostly) and luck. Some bits were tricky as the mountain snow melt over the summer washed a great deal of the trail away in certain parts requiring more luck than skill to find the actual trail on the other side of the summer ravines. With the limited view of the headlight, some triangular searching for the next trail marker was needed.
Something else about night trekking, you can't see your goal. This brings me to a comment from a German I met while staying at a cabana in Romania. He said, “Sometimes, you have to let the walk take you.” All summer long the top of the summit was goal, the visible end or way point that brings comfort to your inner TomTom and raises your adrenalin to finish the job. Tonight though, I had no visible ends or way points. I had 15 feet of a continuous walk. For the first time, I let the walk take me. The weather was good. The mountain was silent save for the comforting water falls and the headlight was still working.
I came to Fridolinshutten at 6,925ft (2111m), and a welcome relief to find a way point in the walk that was taking me. The hut is only open during the weekends in September, and the shuttered Swiss chalet of a cabana was quiet. Steps away was a small pond and an open mountain refuge.
Like a mirror on a dark wall in an even darker room, the pond eerily reflected the stars in the sky above. I turned my headlight off and was immersed in a world of darkens. Only the stars reflected and real, created light. Looking into the pond was like looking down on the universe. Distant water falls broke the dark silence along with the occasional loose rock tumbling to its next resting spot. If I spent the night looking down on the universe in the pond, mathematically, I'd never be able to reach Toedi the next day and back to Linthal for the train home. Conditions were still good, legs strong and Grunhornhutte only about 1000ft (304m) in elevation away at 8,031ft (2448m).
According to both terrain maps, this wouldn't be such a bad climb except for a little part right before Grunhornhutte. The maps failed to display the washed out trail, ensuing missing trail markers, rushing ravines of thawing glaciers and impossibly loose rock surface at a 35 degree incline or more. The little part before the hut was a near vertical switchback climb that kept on past the tolerance of my legs for the day. I let the walk take me. I let my arms pull me up and my feet dig in where possible. Each stop allowed a 15ft illuminated search for the next trail marker indicating the next boulder to hold onto. I'd no other choice. No place to set up a tent on a cliff side.
With such limited visibility, I nearly ran into the Grunhornhutte. Built into and out of the top of the crag, it took my eyes a little time to discern rock from hut. About 20ft wide and a bit longer, the small hut with a high pitched wood roof was simply perfect. I'd have wanted nothing else at this time of night or location. I didn't see or hear anyone since I left the main road. The door was secured from the outside by two latches. I have no idea why, but I knocked on the weathered wood door. The altitude must have been getting to me.
I opened the door to a musky smell and my headlight illuminated a simple place. A small wooden table and bench, a wood stove and sleep area with foam mattresses consisted of the lower level. A sleep loft was accessed by a ladder with numerous wool blankets and similarly covered mattresses. I hung my headlight from a string attached to the upper rafters and began setting up for the night. Outside I could only make out the mountains by the disappearing stars. With such a clear night, my personal planetarium was in full view. The milky way provided a halo over my world.
I sat down on the bench kicking my boots off. I gazed out the door into a darkness only broken by the glow from my headlight above and the background of stars. There was a waterfall nearby. The pounding water echoed in the cabin but it was unseen. The chill of the mountains started to creep into the cabin so I closed the door and continued with my wine, granola dinner and map studies for the next day. The sleep loft was perfectly comfortable. I put my boots at the bottom of my sleeping bag to keep them warm for the start of the next day. I hung my headlight from another rafter and read my book to the sound of the ominous waterfall. A few pages in, my eyes shut for the night.
One last thing about night hiking, there is no greater present you'll receive than the view at sunrise the next day. Combine every Christmas, birthday or anniversary gift you've ever received and you won't come close to what you wake up to after climbing during the night. No exceptions. Especially this morning.
I creaked, not the cabin, down the ladder and fumbled out the door. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I realized I was on a perch of a crag in the middle of a dynamic fiefdom of God's world. Fantastically dramatic in scale, the vista to the cloud covered valley below was rose colored with the rising sun. The mountain ridge in front of me hinted at the age of the world with colored stratifications. That was nothing compared to the inspiring Bifertenfirn glacier to my right leading way to Toedi. The ice glowed with the morning twilight. Behind me Grunhorn mountain towered above the hut by the same name with the last star of the night topping it like a beacon. Back left was the waterfall providing such a restful sound during the night. Below left, I finally saw the trail I came up during the night, impossibly built into the near vertical slope. I'm not sure I would have climbed it in daylight!
The day's goal was at hand and I needed to be out of the hut by 7am, actual sunrise. I also wanted to hit the glacier before the sun rose over the ridge as I knew from my readings the worse time to be playing around a glacier is when it begins to melt. I took only my essential gear and rations with me to make for a light pack for speed and agility. I'd be back at the hut later that day or air lifted to safety. Sounded rational at the time.
First step to the glacier wasn't a step at all, it was a repel down the crag assisted by a cable fastened to the rock. This is how to start a morning! At the bottom, I stepped on the glacier and quickly learned the debris riddled ice cube was a frictionless world. I put on the crampons designed for icy sidewalks and driveways and hoped for the best. At first I was quiet surprised how much the crampons helped. The process was slow and needed great attention to not hurry up the footsteps and lose traction or come across a hidden fissure. I stayed close to the cliff side but that wasn't much better as the debris only covered smooth and brittle rock. This lack of traction became tiring and I stopped to take a break and to realize what I'd gotten myself into.
With legs somewhat rested, my determination and confidence artificially got me going again. The risks taken with each leap to icy foot hold were numerous. I sent prayers through my hands to make every rock hold sturdy. The call of the summit was astonishingly powerful until I made a third and final attempt to climb around, through or even under Gelbe Wand at 9209ft (2807m).
On the last attempt, I launched myself up on top of a boulder, not realizing it was covered in a thin layer of clear ice. I slid to a spread eagle position, face down on a boulder smack in the middle of this contraption of ice and rock. I asked myself, "Am I still having fun?" An alarming sense of adrenaline rushed through me and I realized the goal of the day was no longer Mt. Toedi, but getting off this boulder. I'd say I was stuck but really, that would have been a blessing as I'm not sure what friction was holding me steady.
Very slowly, I bent my right leg back towards me to pull off one of my crampons with my right hand. I dug into the shallow ice sheet to get a hand hold. After that I was able to pull myself up just enough to slide myself off to the left of the boulder and land harshly on the next level where I came from. The day was done.
I stood in absolute humbleness looking at this twenty-story wall of ice and rock in complete defeat. I'd already used up my nine lives of climbing luck to escape a slippery fall to certain injury if not worse. Normally, I fear making an injurious mistake due to the embarrassment of having mountain rangers go through the trouble of saving a recreational fool. This time, my jester hat found me pondering far worse situations where feeling embarrassed at the bottom of a fifty foot ice fissure, would be lucky.
My eyes and brain kept looking for the elusive path. Maybe the hidden passage would just appear with concentrated thought. Previous attempts seemed the obvious choices once again. “If only I could...” thoughts of chance broke loose in my brain just as the morning ice began to break loose randomly through the glacier. It sounded like gun shots racketing between the ridges. Failure has never been an option. I've always found a way. In one of my bravest decisions ever, I turned away. I would need more gear and more people and that simply wasn't going to happen.
With my head hung low in disappointment, an inescapable challenge came into view. I had to get back to the Grunhornhutte. The way up was difficult enough and I wasn't sure I could make it back using the same path. On this section of the glacier, the city crampons did their job nicely. I carefully navigated around the fissures and kept to the dirty ice sections for extra traction afforded by debris exposed by seasonal melting.
The glacier exploring was quiet brilliant. The sun was just making it's way over the south ridge line and the blue hues of the ice glowed in earnest. The fissures were drawing me closer. Some of the fissures were bottomless pits of darkness contrasted with brilliant white carvings of ice walls. The wonderment was getting the best of me and I ran into more trouble as I got closer to the craggy section of the glacier.
These near ice bergs, either pushed up or torn away by the glacier forces, were unbelievable. I've seen these formations on television and movies, but never in real life. Unfortunately, I wasn't listening to the crampons which long ago were screaming with scrapes and clings that their intended use had been passed up about twenty feet ago. The tractable firn I was on just behind melted away exposing glacier ice.
The angle of the glacier here was only about 20 degrees, but that was enough for my next step to cause my left foot crampon to give up the ghost and slip out from under me. It is said many climbers die on the way down more than they do on the way up. That's comforting isn't it? Here I go again. I put my weight on my right foot and hoped it was enough to hold. I went down on my left knee, grabbed the little tripod section of my camera with my mouth and reached for anything to hold onto with my gloved hands. I thought I heard the glacier take a gasp of panic at my predicament. I did.
With my face only inches from the ice, my heavy breathing was steaming up the exposed glacial ice. I could see right through it between breaths to some end possibly centuries away. The way light reflects around ice sculptures brings a certain life to them despite being just frozen water until the party is over. Here though, the ice seemed to breath. It felt like finding I was trekking on a sleeping giant that couldn't be bothered with my presence, or at least shouldn't be woken to it.
With my right foot firmly planted as much as possible, I was able to stretch over with my left foot and plant the crampon in some softer firn. Once off the bit of troublesome glacier ice, I took a more studied course to the base of the cliff side up to Grunhornhutte.
I sat outside the hut engaged in a sunlit display of living Alps. With winter approaching, these final days of summer played another chapter of an ageless epic of inanimate life. The glacier would soon wake out of a summer slumber and grow with the winter snows. The waterfall behind the hut would quiet to an icy freeze. The kaleidoscope of geological prism would turn white with snow. The north wind already began to howl around the peaks of the surrounding mountains, yet barely whispering to the loan mountain daisy by my left foot.
Sitting in the middle of this largeness of life, I should have felt exposed and vulnerable. The Grunhornhutte, however, jutting from the rocks behind me, provided a sense of control. I have to think I was beyond hermitage. I was beyond the guru at the top of the mountain. I was beyond the Buddhist at Zen. This feeling of elation did not want to make me sing. It did not want to make me write poetry or sketch, but my God, I certainly didn't want it to end. This Zen topping, perfect spot on Earth, was mine, for an endless moment.
This is why I trek. This is why I push myself to the brink of my ever evolving performance envelope. I discover places most feel can never exist. We forget with the tellings of turmoil in our world such wonder exists. You just have to get to it. Then you have to find it.
Before leaving, I wanted to be a good guest of Grunhornhutte. I made the beds up on the upper loft, folded the extra blankets neatly and fluffed the pillows. I swept the lower level and dusted off the stove. Having more rations than needed due to the truncated trek to the top of Toedi, I left a nearly full bag of airplane peanuts and a first class amenity kit neatly displayed on the table. The next guest(s) of Toedi would be ready to experience what I did in good order.
While literally sliding down the crag supporting the hut, I was still in disbelief I made it up the same way in the dark. Further, how I ever found the trail markers on the other side of the ravines at night is a miracle since I had a harder time during daylight. The trek was quick to Fridolinshutten and the view fantastic with Toedi towering to the left, the glacier to my right and an 11,000ft ridge highlighting the vista to the right. I stopped for lunch at the little pond and took in some of the sun while resting for the descent to Linthal. Oddly, this was the only time all summer I went sunbathing, next to a glacier.
With a bit more time than expected, I went on the other side of the ravine where I could clearly see a well used shepherd trail. Getting there was a case study in dead ends. I had to navigate below where the glacier ended. No ice involved but smooth granite rock walls, cliffs and deep ravines filled with late summer powerful water flows made the going rough. As I sat up high on a granite cliff figuring the puzzle out, a little helper came to my rescue, a mountain goat.
This is very fitting, as the goats of the mountains I've spent the summer climbing have been my helpers. They know how to get around the crags, ravines and by nature, pick the paths of less resistance. The goats leave their droppings as trail markers and on occasion, such as this one, show me the way across the rocks. I was maybe a quarter mile away but the goat still managed to smell me out.
He looked right at me. His horns were at full growth. They curved back and even at this distance the sun highlighted the colorings to the black tip. The coat varied in browns, accentuating the muscle of this fine mountain goat. He paused and then took off as if the terrain was nothing to him. I watched him make his way in detail, noting the ups, downs and arounds until he was out of sight. I followed quickly until I came to the area where I lost him. No wonder. The goat led me to a what would be the last obstacle of the day, a twenty-foot waterfall leading to a steeply falling stream.
No way around it, just through it. I took off my boots and socks and hung them around my neck to keep them dry. I was already in shorts and hoped the muddy water wouldn't be too deep. I couldn't run through the rushing water as a loose step could end up being a quick and dangerous ride down the ravine. Each step was careful and the water was more powerful than cold. I actually paused half way through as the cold water felt good on the feet. On the other side I stepped gingerly on the sharp rocks to a smooth cliff area looking over the ravine and into the valley. I dried out while taking in the cliff side vista. Up high on the ridge I heard the goat making his way to where ever he was heading to.
The shepherd trail was easy to navigate allowing me to make good time to Linthal. I took another break above Hinter Sand, listening along with the opposite towering mountains to the performance of cow bells ring away in the lower meadow. Afternoon clouds were starting to build, but only to admire the towering peaks. Their fate soon filled by the dry mountain air.
With beer and snacks in hand, the train ride back to Zürich was much the same simplicity of efficiency as before. As I sat across from my pack looking at the broken crampon strapped on the right side and the soiled gaiters on the left, it dawned on me I was beaten by a glacier. Oddly, it felt good. The altitude, distance and difficulty of the trek was stacked against my favor which means a challenge remains. Toedi remains, the glacier remains and Grunhornhutte will still be around for another attempt.
