On Thursday our ultimate destination was the Hollandia hut - a 7km slog up the Aletsch Glacier. On the way, we wanted to try and climb the Aletschhorn via the appealingly named Hasselripp. During the night the snow had continued to fall, accompanied by nuking winds. Going to the outside toilet was not fun!.
Skies were a little clearer in the morning.
The Drieckhorn, the Aletschhorn (covered in clouds), and the Aletsch Glacier leading to the hut. The hut is to the right, above the saddle.
The clouds were moving in fast, making it an easy decision to nix the technical Aletschhorn route. The winds were nuking out of the N, so we decided to tackle the Kranzberg Peak, with the objective of skiing one of the wind sheltered S faces.
Before any of this, we had to tackle the dreaded stairs.
Crossing the Concordia Platz in the nuking winds, looking back at the hut.
Kranzberg Peak.
More clouds, rolling up the glacier.
The Hasselripp route to the Aletschhorn.
The weather got worse and worse. An hour or so up Kranzberg, enough was enough, descending to the glacier on a lovely breakable crust. Our route to the Hollandia Hut should have been fairly straightforward from here - a westward slog up the glacier to the saddle. As the visibility was quite bad we crossed the glacier to avoid the crevasse areas on the N side and to navigate off the lower faces of the Aletschhorn. The weather got even nastier as the winds shifted around to the W. In the white-out we managed to veer off to the right, going way to the N of the hut. With the GPS not making much sense, and seeing tracks heading in the opposite direction ("either they're lost, we're lost, or we're both lost), we figured out our location. After a quick U-turn, we navigated ourselves to the hut. The relative luxury of the previous night was forgotten as we had to share a tiny dorm with a zillion other people. The food wasn't any good either, but after a day battling the element, I didn't really care.