THE SPAGHETTI TOUR

Words WENDY BRUERE

Photography WILLIAM SKEA

We were only six hours into what was meant to be an easy five-day tour when we saved a man’s life. By ‘we’, I don’t mean ‘me’. Nor do I mean Peter, my partner in both life and on this climb.

By ‘we’, I mean Will.

Peter and I are alpine amateurs; our friend Will, conversely, is a mountain maestro. In exchange for a donation to his cat-rescue charity, he was guiding us on the ‘Spaghetti Tour’, a classic route through the Monte Rosa Massif—a collection of connected peaks spilling between Italy and Switzerland that culminates in the Dufourspitze, which at 4,634m is Western Europe’s second-highest peak. The route takes in many of the massif’s 4,000+m peaks, and is done—usually—over five days, with you staying at high-altitude mountain huts on the Italian side; the final hut, Margherita Hut, clings improbably to the very summit of the 4,554m Signalkuppe. From there you descend the Grenz Glacier towards Zermatt, Switzerland.

A friend who had done it several years ago made it sound like a picturesque stroll across the top of the Alps, with easy summits giving panoramic views of soaring mountains. But a heatwave meant conditions were different in 2022. As the permafrost melted, there was increased rockfall; as glaciers deteriorated, more crevasses appeared. And due to the lack of snowfall the previous winter, not only were conditions steeper and icier than usual, the glaciers were left with little protection from the heat of the summer to come, which, as it turned out, would be the hottest on record. Prior to 2022, the Swiss Academy of Sciences defined an annual loss of Switzerland’s glacial-ice volume of two per cent as ‘extreme’. In 2022, it lost an unprecedented six per cent.

The risks were greater than ever.

On the cable car from Zermatt to 3,883m, watching the landscape turn to ice

Ready for adventure— Peter and I excited as we prepare to begin

Following the ridge to the summit of Castor

We spent our second day in the mountains revising crevasse rescue

The unmistakable Matterhorn rises in the distance

BEFORE WE’D COMMENCED OUR TOUR, Peter and I had revised crevasse-rescue techniques at our campsite in Zermatt. But that was before Will had actually seen the on-mountain conditions; once he’d seen them, he suggested we take an extra day to polish our skills. And so we did, practising anchors and haul systems in the lacerated ice near the hut. As the uncharacteristically aggressive sun grew bolder in the afternoon, the snow turned to slush. Shallow puddles formed. Avalanches crashed in the distance. Only once Peter and I had demonstrated our skills—taking turns being lowered into a silent, white crevasse to be then ‘rescued’—did Will seem confident in our abilities. Fair enough; if Will was the one to fall, his life would depend on us.

On the first day, we had taken the first gondola up from Zermatt. We summited the Breithorn (4,163m, and my first 4,000er) in the morning, walking up a snow slope that became steadily steeper and icier, before—in the thinning air, gasping for breath—creeping along the knife-edged, otherworldly ridge.

The crevasses were so plentiful as we returned to the glacier, it was like navigating swathes of ancient fabric, ripped and torn. We didn’t pause before jumping across each rent. As is standard practice for glacier travel, we were roped together, so a fall was unlikely to be dangerous. I was at the end of our group of three, so I often didn’t have time to think before I jumped—if the others were moving, pausing on the edge would risk me being yanked forward. For wider crevasses, we tiptoed across on snow bridges, hoping they’d hold. Occasionally one of my legs would punch through a weakness in a snow bridge, and I’d gently transfer my weight to my other leg, hoping that one didn’t go too.

Then two men overtook us. They were moving fast but— strangely—unroped across the glacier, and we registered the danger. Fifteen minutes later, we caught up with them. One had broken through the snow, and was dangling above a ten-metre crevasse. In a stroke of luck, though, his pack had caught on the crevasse’s lip, and his friend had grabbed his arm in a monkey grip to stop him falling further. Still, he teetered on the edge of death. The pair were helpless to do anything but wait.

Then we arrived. In a second, Will assessed the situation and morphed into James Bond on ice. In two minutes, he built an anchor, secured himself, got the man on a rope, and hauled him out by his pack. Peter and I followed Will’s instructions to stay high on the slope and to build a backup anchor, which—probably luckily—was not put to the test.

The rescued man didn’t speak much English, but he patted Will’s shoulder and said a heartfelt, “Thank you!”

NON-MOUNTAINEERS MIGHT BE BLISSFULLY unfamiliar with something called a ‘V-thread’. I was, however, about to discover that two joined holes in ice—and here’s the salient bit—and nothing more, are apparently considered perfectly acceptable to rappel from.

I discovered this as Will trailblazed a direct route to our first night’s hut, the Ayas Guides Hut. It was perched by the end of the glacier, and our new line down the ice became uncomfortably sharply angled. Sleet chilled our bodies and obscured our vision. Will later happily declared, “It looked like we could’ve been on K2!” Then, while we traversed along a steep slope using ice screws for protection, we sighted the track below: It was clear the quickest way to reach it was to abseil.

Will used an ice screw to drill two angled holes that met in the middle, like a V, to thread the rope through. The first people to go down can use ice screws as a backup in case the V suddenly shatters in an explosion of icy doom, but the last person (inevitably me) had to remove the screws, and trust the V-thread entirely. The theory being that if the V-thread survives the heaviest people first, the lightest one should be fine without backup. It took four anxious pitches to reach the bottom. Will and Peter proclaimed it the best part of the day.

We stayed the first two nights at the Ayas Guides Hut. Chatting to other mountaineers there, we realised most had hiked up from the valley on the Italian side—guides from Zermatt were no longer prepared to take clients the way we had come. Even the famously easy Breithorn was off the cards. I was both reassured by this (if we’d already done something guides wouldn’t take clients on, then surely it’d be easier from here?) and concerned (what exactly did we think we were doing on these disintegrating glaciers?).

Our next 4000-er was Castor. We started back up the glacier by the light of our head torches at 4:30AM. The mountain was like a sleeping snow leopard. From a distance it looked like a soft mound of pillowy white; the closer we got, the more danger became apparent. The easy start metamorphosed into stark edges and hard surfaces; one misplaced foot could send you hurtling back down the slope. Will switched us to short-roping, assuring us that if someone slipped, the others would catch them immediately and we wouldn’t all, for example, be dragged down together in a screaming, spiky mass of crampons and ice axes.

Around 25m below the summit ridge, the route transformed into a straight up ice climb. Will led it easily, as I belayed. He glided over the icy bergschrund and disappeared up the nearvertical slope. It was the kind of climb he could have happily soloed. To me, who had never ice climbed in my life, it looked like The Wall in Game of Thrones.

Peter and I each carried one ice tool. Will climbed with two; he would lower them back down after he set the anchor. Meanwhile, Peter and I waited, balancing on the footholds we’d kicked into the slope, wriggling our toes to keep warm. Suddenly one axe shot down the rope, attached by a carabiner, quickly followed by the second. It was time for me to learn to ice climb.

The first few metres were solid, featured ice. It cut away at the base and I struggled to find footholds. But eventually I got started, and I discovered that even my shaky crampon and axe placements held. I flailed my way up, moving as fast as I could, desperate to get the ordeal over with.

I shouted up to Will, hopeful for some reassurance.

“Does it flatten out at the top? It gets easier after this, right?”

“Mmm,” Will replied. “It’s quite a narrow ridgeline. You might not like it.”

Will assured me the ridge was safe. If one person slipped, the other two could just jump over the other side to catch them on the rope. Easy peasy.

At the summit the wind was bitter, but the sky was forget-menot blue. Lightheaded with adrenaline in the oxygen-sparse air, the peaks unfolded below us in peaks and dips like the skirt of an overly extravagant wedding dress, fading into the valleys below. The trail widened a little on the other side of the mountaintop, and for one perfect hour we stayed high, following the ridge gently down through the ethereal landscape.