Chamonix To Zermatt
The Haute Route
August 12th & 13th 1994
Verbiers to Cabane de Montfort to Haute Nendaz
The day started quite unpromisingly, with a lot of low cloud and the odd hint of rain. Between the guide book and tourist information centre, we had conflicting information about the length of the walk up to the hut, it was anything from three hours on the one hand, to six hours on the other. Just to be on the safe side Irene persuaded Mad Max the aeronautical hotelier, to get up early enough to give us breakfast at seven. So, we got off to a flying start!…….(sorry).
The Cabanes, huts, or refuges, they go under several different names, nearly all belong to the Swiss Alpine Club. The SAC is split geographically into sections and each section owns and maintains one of these mountain outposts, not usually in their own area, but for use by their members. The Montfort Hut is run by the Jarman section of the SAC. The huts are also open to all, mountaineers, walkers, lovers of nature, everyone is welcome, either as a day visitor, or for a small fee you can stay overnight and enjoy the unique experience of waking up in the high mountains. The accommodation is fairly basic, hostel style, but friendly, warm and comfortable and how else could you enjoy a night above the eight thousand foot contour. If it’s a hotel you are looking for then this isn’t for you. The huts are not open all year round, so check if you plan to visit one, but when they are open they will have a guardian and possibly a small team of helpers. But the huts rely on visitors being respectful, looking after themselves and most importantly clearing up after themselves. It is possible to get a meal and a drink in the huts, but the cost usually reflects the difficulty of getting supplies up to their remote location. Understandably the huts operate under quite strict rules and you should acquaint yourself with them before arriving. One of the first rules to take note of is the ‘no boots in the hut’ rule, look for the boot rack and swap your boots for a pair of indoor shoes, usually a strange pair of wooly slippers.
As the guide book had promised the path worked it’s way steeply through the forest. We stopped to fill our water bottles at the standpipe by the trough in the farming hamlet of Clambin. It was a beautiful, cool damp morning. Everywhere was dripping wet from the overnight rain, the early morning air was cool and still. Clouds drifted gently around the deep valley below as if trying to find a way out.
As we cleared the tree line the path levelled out and we began to contour around the mountain alongside an ancient bise. A bise is an irrigation channel dug out around the side of the mountain to provide water for crops growing in the fields below. The glacier covered mountain of Grand Combin was directly across the valley from us, but it was playing hide and seek behind the clouds. Every now and then it revealed tantalising glimpses, but never the whole mountain at once. To our surprise, at 10.30, the Cabane du Montfort came into view, about an hours walk away. Suddenly my caution seemed to have been a little excessive.
We stood looking at the hut and wondered what we would do with the rest of the day and as we did, light rain began to fall. We decided to have a break and took shelter under the eaves of a small chalet just off the path. We sat eating from our usual, but to most people unusual, menu of reblochon cheese, nectarine and Swiss chocolate. We first discovered the delights of reblochon when holidaying in the Aravis mountains of the Haute Savoie in France, the area where the cheese originates from. It has a very distinctive creamy, nutty flavour and actually has it’s own AOC which determines that it must be made from the raw milk of three specific breed of cow. It’s origins go back to the fourteenth century and the ingenuity of the Savoie herdsmen. The farmers were completely dependent upon the landowners who levied a tax on all the milk produced. At milking time, in front of the landowners overseer, the herdsmen would pretend to complete the milking but when the overseer had gone, the farmer would go back to the task and carry out a second milking, or re-milking, re-blocher. The milk that was left was far creamier and from this second, creamy re-milking they made their cheese, Reblochon.
The rain stopped and the sky brightened up enough to warm the air slightly. This was the sign for a family of marmots to venture out of their burrow onto the grassy hillside and sniff the air, less than fifty metres away from us. We watched the weather, we watched the clouds, we watched the Grand Combin, we watched the marmots feeding and playing together and the marmots watched us, very, very, vigilantly. But as long as we stayed still, they carried on as if we weren’t there and by the time we got up to move on, a full hour had passed by almost unnoticed.
After lunch we swapped our clogs back to our boots and headed out, further up the mountains behind Verbier. This was a bonus that we hadn’t expected, our early arrival at the hut gave us the chance to explore the higher mountains at leisure and unencumbered by our rucksacks. The higher we went, the more interesting the flowers became. High up here in mid August, the spring alpines were still in flower, not as prolific as earlier in the year when spring arrives in the valleys, but still beautiful all the same. It was one of those wandering walks across the mountainside that took us from one patch of flowers to the next and the next….. Until eventually we reached the ridge and total shock! The view from the ridge was what can only be described as a total disaster area. The mountain was subject to a rash assault from every kind of earth moving equipment you can possibly imagine. The scene spread out infront of us looked like a construction site for a new motorway, but was in fact the creation of a new ski station, restaurant and piste. It was an unbelievable and distressing sight, here at over nine thousand feet up in a mountain wilderness, the mountain was being torn apart. On the opposite ridge there were huge cranes employed in the construction of new buildings, the whole valley had been scorched, removing all life and huge bulldozers were rearranging the more permanent features of the natural landscape. I stood for ages, just looking. I couldn’t take it all in, the scale of it all and the amount of money that must be supporting this devastation of nature. I just could not understand how anyone could bring themselves to desecrate a mountain habitat in this way and still live with their consciences.
The temperature started to drop as we turned and headed back towards the hut. The Montfort Hut has a very welcoming look as it sits comfortably on a rocky outcrop high upon the slopes of Mont Gele and we were glad to get back into it’s cosy warmth. The clouds were lifting and the skies clearing, so even this early in the evening, the temperature dipped to well below freezing. But Grand Combin still hung onto it’s clouds, still shrouded in mist, so we still didn’t get a clear view of this grand mountain.
All was going well, but still there was something niggling in the back of my mind. Two more rucksacks had appeared in ‘our room’. Okay, that’s not too bad, but will there be anymore next time we look? Eighteen feet divided by four isn’t so bad, but eighteen divided by six is getting a bit too close for comfort!
The Montfort Hut has been there for a hundred years and the interior is exactly what you would expect of a rustic, high mountain chalet. The soft tones of it’s wooden interior and the warmth of the log fire are very welcoming. With the meal over we had a few beers to help us sleep, we went outside one last time to view the stars. It was very cold now, but the non existent light pollution meant the view of the universe was stunning. All we could see was the outline of snow capped peaks and stars that went on for evermore. It was 19.45 and by 20.00 we were tucked up, or to be more precise, cocooned in our sleeping bags. I couldn’t help but be amused as we lay there, ready for a night’s sleep, I thought about home and deducted the hour’s time difference and had the strange thought that back home there was still half an hour until Coronation St came on the tele. All of that seemed so far away as here we were settling down for the night in a wooden chalet eight thousand feet up in The Alps. Our companions for the night followed a discreet few minutes later, but no matter how discreet, it is impossible to ignore that there are two strangers trying to sleep very near by, with only the symbolic barrier of a couple of rucksacks between us.
I don’t know if it was us or our French room mates who were first off the starting blocks, but at ten past six, with the first light appearing in the dark sky, it felt okay to start moving without disturbing anyone or causing offence.
There are some special moments in life that are so spectacular that they remain with you forever. It is unfortunate but true that you cannot hold onto the entire feeling of those moments, but you do remember some of that feeling and the impact it had on your senses. This was one such moment. As we stood together that morning on the terrace at Cabane du Montfort, it felt like the whole world stood still. Standing there in the chilled morning air, watching as the early morning light illuminated the Mont Blanc Massif. Thin whips of mist drifted out of the valleys where it was still dark. The first light of morning spread a warm glow on the highest peaks and slowly, the early morning light moved down the mountain side turning the snowy slopes a shade of pink. I stand transfixed by the vision, trying to drink it all in, to soak up as much as I can, knowing that in it’s transience it will soon slip for my gaze like a half forgotten dream. I turn to go, but immediately feel that I am already losing some of that view, so I am compelled to go back again and again for more. But it is futile, the moment moves on as the sun starts to appear, I try to hold the moment, but it slips away, out of reach. But something of this moment will stay with me forever, because it is impossible to witness such a sight and then remain the same, untouched by it’s overwhelming, but transient beauty. A moment that we shared and will speak of from time to time throughout the rest of our lives.
Soon it was back to the reality of making progress and our destination for today was another hut, the Refuge de Prafleuri, one of the few privately owned huts in the Swiss Alps. The facilities at the Prafleuri Hut were reputedly more primitive than at Montfort and it was unclear if we could get a meal. It is fair to say that we weren’t exactly looking forward to staying there. We now had a choice of three routes to get to Prafleuri. This section of the walk had been a major obstacle for would be Chamonix to Zermatt trekkers for many years. A long chain of high mountains stretching up to the twelve thousand feet mark, with a succession of glaciers along it’s northern side meant that a direct route was not possible and a significant diversion was necessary to get around these mountains and their attendant glaciers. That was until the retreat of the Grand Desert Glacier. It was now possible to get across the foot of the retreating ice, quite safely, in the summer…. reputedly! The first option involved a long contour around the mountain on a narrow path with a high degree of exposure and subject to rock falls and landslips. We were already feeling a little put off by that route! The second option was the route over the high Col de Louvie, before crossing the foot of the retreating Grand Desert glacier, which supposedly was pretty much free of crevasses by now. The phrase “pretty much free” left some uncertainty and the very nature of crevasses meant no one could guarantee that they were no longer there. From the glacier it was a mere three miles uphill to the Prafleurie hut. No, that route didn’t appeal to much us either.
The third option was to take one of two cols to the north, up behind the Montfort hut, down to the Lac De Cleusson where we would have to almost double back to head south east. This would take us up past the Grand Desert, over the Col de Prafleuri and up to the hut. Not the most direct route, but we felt happier and more comfortable with it, especially as we chose the Col Des Gentianes which had a cable car that would deliver us almost down to the lake.
We left the Montfort hut behind us as we headed up towards the Col Des Gentianes, our spirits were high. Maybe it was because of that wonderful view, maybe it was that early morning in the high mountains feeling, or maybe we aren’t really that keen on huts and we were glad to be away from it. The trouble is, it wasn’t really over because there was another hut waiting for us at the end of the day, but there was another wonderful day’s walking to enjoy before that little challenge would trouble us. For now we were enjoying the moment and the moment was truly wonderful.
A stiff climb of around fifteen hundred feet, past the retreating Glacier Du Montfort took us up to the col at a height just short of ten thousand feet. According to our information there was a cable car that would take us down to Tortin and the nearby Lac de Cleusson. With typical thoroughness we had checked the opening times and the seasons and we were on course to catch the nine o’clock service down the mountain to the valley bottom. On arrival at the col we were a bit puzzled to see a closed sign on the departures board, the place did have a closed look about it, but it certainly wasn’t locked up. Further exploration was required, this could be a serious set back as it would not be possible to walk down to Tortin due to the Tortin Glacier blocking our route. The Tortin Glacier is a huge and impressive obstacle, covered in enormous seracs and crevasses, not even a consideration as a walking route. We headed down the stairs to the ticket office, no one there. In fact the ominous sign of the ticket office being used to store furniture was a little concerning. We continued all the way to the gondola without being challenged or seeing anyone. We could hear people around somewhere, maybe maintenance workers, it wasn’t looking very promising, they obviously weren’t expecting any customers. I was beginning to think about another night back at the Cabane du Montfort and how that might affect our plans for the days ahead. We eventually found a workman who tried to explain what was going on and although the detail was lost on us, it was quite clear that the cable car was closed! The dismay and disappointment must have shown on our faces because he then said that if we were prepared to wait a little longer he would take us down.
Twenty minutes later he invited us onto the gondola and soon we were passing over the Glacier de Tortin, a private service and all without charge. What a nice thing to do, what a nice man. From the rather cold and desolate Col Des Gentianes we swooped down to Tortin in the valley bottom, a sudden loss in altitude of over three thousand feet. I couldn’t help thinking about that loss, as now we had to start regaining the height in another valley and we had already climbed fifteen hundred feet from Montfort to the Col de Gele. Tortin was a lush green place compared with where we had just come from, warmer too, but still in the shade, it was cool enough to make us want to keep moving. After a short walk down the valley we turned right and entered the valley of Haute Nendaz, and once again we started to climb, this time it was up to the barrage of Lac De Cleusson. The climb and the sunshine forced us to stop so that we could remove our jumpers and long trousers, it was getting very warm at last.
The barrage towered up infront of us, an enormous wall of concrete, part of the grand hydro electric scheme in The Valais region. The scheme links three lakes, Lac De Dix, Lac De Moiry and Lac De Cleusson, all were on our route over the next few days. The Lac De Cleusson part of the scheme was added between 1993 and 1998 to increase the scheme’s capacity. It was however closed down for nine years, just two years after commissioning, when a nine metre by sixty centimetre hole appeared in the section of the pipe between Cleusson and the Lac De Dix. A huge outflow of water surged down the valley and could not be prevented from reaching Nendaz and Fey in the valley below. One of the incredible facts about the scheme is that it is mostly underground, or under mountains to be more precise. The numbers that describe the scheme are mind blowing, I might quote some of them when we reach Lac De Dix, but for now we were heading for an uncertain route ahead.
Cleusson was not the most picturesque of the three lakes by any means. The water was a green, grey, milk like substance and being about twenty feet below capacity, there was an ugly scar right around the water’s edge.
According to the map, the footpath was due to fade out soon after we had walked past the far end of the lake, just as we entered the area recently vacated by the glacier Grand Desert. I rather hoped that it was wrong and the path might have become more established since the map was published. For the same reasons, the guide book was also a little vague about the way ahead. Of course I should have known better, it’s probably sacrilege to even consider that a Swiss map might be wrong. Even so, in this case, I was hoping….
Non Compass Meant Us
We sat on the high ground above the end of the lake, looking down on it’s strangely coloured waters. We took the opportunity to combine a sun cream stop with a lunch break. Reblochon, nectarine and chocolate was becoming our staple midday diet, along with as much water as we could manage to carry. Most of the top end of the valley was now visible to us, as was the Col de Prafleuri, our crossing point into the next valley. Unfortunately I didn’t take the opportunity to confirm with a compass exactly which dip in the horizon we were heading for and with the footpath about to run out on us, things were about to get difficult. At this point everything felt very comfortable, maybe because the scenery hereabouts, did remind us of The Lake District, probably because there was even a pack horse bridge, the kind that can be seen around the Cumbrian fells. The similarity was fleeting and as we climbed up into the top of the valley and entered the recently glaciated bowl where it’s true Alpine nature revealed itself to us.
We climbed to the top of yet another moraine and anxiously looked around, but now nothing looked familiar, nothing looked as we had expected it to, nothing to re-affirm that we were in the right place, or heading in the right direction. What we had thought looked like a path up to a col, now as we got closer, looked like a steep and impassible scree. As we scanned the horizon none of the potential ways up looked possible anymore. We read the book again, studied the map again and scanned the horizon again. Why had I not checked it out with my compass when we stopped for lunch? Everything seemed so straight forward back then, so it hardly seemed necessary, but it was too late to take a bearing now because I could no longer be precise about our current position on the map. We stood looking at the huge piles of glacial moraine, some of them hundreds of feet high. We looked at the semi circle of high peaks surrounding us, knowing that somewhere, there was a way through, but where was it?
We changed direction again to see if we could find any indication at all of the way forward, a painted mark on a rock? a path? or even a signpost? Nothing, it wasn’t exactly a busy route, we hadn’t seen anyone else for four hours and that just added to our feeling of isolation as the doubt crept further in. Suddenly a moment of high hope, a paint mark on a boulder and a hint of a path! At last, back on track, but then the ‘path’ disappeared after just a few metres. We retraced the path and wandered backwards and forwards along it’s length, looking all around, but there was no more path and no more painted rocks. We climbed up a great heap of glacial debris in the hope of spotting a route, but still we could not see a way forward.
Now, there have been occasions when it has been suggested that I have been lost, so I think this would be a good point to clarify this. How could we be lost when I knew where we were on the map, give or take an inch or two? How could we be lost when if necessary, I knew exactly how to retrace our steps back to safety? How could we be lost if I knew where we were going? In this case we were going to the Col de Prafleuri, I just wasn’t sure where it was right now. So we weren’t exactly lost, we were just looking. I prefer to think of it as ‘temporarily misplaced’ rather than lost. No, it wasn’t us that was lost, it was the col that was lost and we were the ones looking for it. After all, no one was looking for us were they? well not yet….
It was beginning to feel like decision time. We had to take a cool and logical look at our situation to ensure that we didn’t walk into anything more serious. We had to keep sight of the fact we were above eight thousand feet up in the Alps and it was a good two and a half hours back to any kind of habitation. In the back of my mind there was the thought that we might have to go back the way we came, but I was trying everything I had, not to make that decision. Feeling hot, tired and frustrated with the situation, perplexed by the lack of an obvious solution, we weren’t in the best frame of mind to make a good decision. However, we were struggling to find a safe way out of this vast bowl of glacial debris, other than the way we had entered it. It was only two thirty, plenty of daylight hours left, but realistically it had been a long day already and we were tiring. We could try to find another option, but this would entail going downhill off this pile of moraine, before setting off uphill yet again and still there would be no guarantee we would find the col. I was beginning to doubt if we would ever find the small Prafleuri Hut over the other side of the ridge, in this vast landscape of high mountains and glacial remains. To add to the anxiety, the blue skies of earlier in the day were turning an ominous shade of grey and the hot afternoon was turning into a humid and sticky one. The high peaks restricted our distant view of the weather, but it felt like a change was on the way. In a couple of hours time, this would not be a very safe place to be. We have been caught out in Alpine thunder storms before and it really is not an experience you would readily repeat. The thought of yet another climb, another hour searching this unforgiving mountain that was holding us hostage, was fast losing it’s appeal. The decision had to be made, we were well over two hours walk from the nearest accommodation, possibly even further from one with rooms available.
With hindsight I am very reassured that, given our physical and mental tiredness and the pressure we put on ourselves to complete this walk, we still made the right decision. But for me, at the time, as we turned and headed back down the valley, it was a desperate, desperate feeling of failure. Maybe it was the sheer exhaustion, combined with making a decision I really didn’t want to make, but for the next hour I was very, very, quiet. I had to concede that the Chamonix to Zermatt walk was now over, just six days in and it had come to a full stop. It felt like all the planning had come to nothing, we could not complete this walk, it had beaten us. All that I could see now was my boots, as one ritually overtook the other, transporting me away from achieving our ambition.
As we made our way down the valley, I eventually forced myself to look up and start taking in the surroundings once again. I couldn’t help but drink in the sheer beauty of all that surrounded us. I began to realise how stupid I had been. After all, here we were, still in Switzerland, still walking in the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen, in a beautiful climate and with the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, such perfect company. Regardless of what happens, regardless of what route our walking takes us, those facts will remain the same. I had foolishly been drawn into thinking that the achievement was more important than the experience, when really it’s the other way around. The only thing wrong with today was that I had foolishly wasted an hour of it in self indulgent pity. A lesson learned.
Back On Track
After abandoning our search for the Col De Prafleuri we walked down the valley until we were fit to drop. Ten hours of tough walking had drained all our energy resources and we were functioning on automatic. We came to a bus stop in a small ski resort called Super Nendaz, which appeared to be mostly locked up until the ski season, except for what appeared to be a youth holiday centre. There was a vending machine next to the bus stop and our provisions had long since been consumed. So the vending machine was a very tempting proposition, but I wasn’t even capable of getting my brain to work and I couldn’t get the machine to part with any of it’s delicious looking snacks and drinks. Sheer exhaustion had defeated me.
When the bus arrived it was already overcrowded and the fantasy of a comfortable bus seat quickly evaporated. We were stood with our rucksacks, squashed into a small space next to the doors. Everytime the bus screeched around a sharp left hand bend and there were a lot of them, we came close to losing our grip on the handles and spilling out onto the road, or down the steep slopes of the valley. A real white knuckle ride! We didn’t have a clue where we were, so it’s no surprise that we got off the bus at the wrong place, but by good fortune, there was a hotel right across the road from the bus stop. And so it was that two, scared out of their wits, dusty from a days walking, exhausted, hot and sweaty ragamuffins, who had spent the previous night in a hut, stumbled into the three star Hotel Deserteur.
I sometimes thought as we approached a hotel, that our appearance alone, after a hard days walking, would put off any hotelier who was trying to run a decent and respectable, establishment. I think they must be used to taking in wanderers like ourselves, or maybe we didn’t look half as bad as we sometimes felt, because we were never turned away. The welcome extended to us was always warm and friendly, perhaps, sometimes a little reserved, but the combination of reserve and friendly warmth created just the right level of welcome for us. Always genuine, but never intrusive. This particular day is probably the best example of hot, tired hikers meeting with genuinely friendly Swiss hospitality.
The elderly lady who greeted us at reception was wonderful, when I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had quickly ushered us out of the door. But she chose not to notice our disheveled state and although I was too tired to understand much of what she said, her welcome was much appreciated. However, her guided tour of the four floors of the hotel, it’s fire escapes, dining rooms and other facilities, would have been better appreciated after we had taken off our packs and had a rest. Never mind, it was all done to make us feel at home and welcome in her hotel. Merci Madame, your hotel was magnifique.
It’s strange how much you can appreciate things when they have been denied you, even for just a short while. A very comfortable, very private hotel room with a wonderfully hot shower…. sheer bliss! After just one night in a mountain hut, sharing a room with others and very few facilities, the sheer luxury of having life’s little comforts restored felt unbelievably good.
We could only speculate about where we were, to ask the hotel staff would have made us appear even more like aliens. Weighing up the shape of the valley, the views and the size of the village, we felt pretty sure that we were in Haute Nendaz, but confidence in my map reading had taken a knock, so we couldn’t be certain. We began to reflect on the day, knowing that if we had got it right, we would now be spending our second consecutive night in the cramped, showerless conditions of a mountain hut. That is exactly what success would have looked like. As it was, we enjoyed the delights of beautifully cooked pork steaks in a very comfortable dining room, as a thunder storm raged outside. The torrential rain and lightning seemed only to highlight the comfort of the Hotel Deserteur even more. If we still had any lingering disappointment about today’s events, they suddenly just faded away.
After a delicious evening meal, the most wonderfully comfortable and restorative night’s sleep, followed by an extensive breakfast, we were strong again and keen to get back on the trail. Contrary to the previous day’s belief that the walk was over, we now had a new plan, a new resolve and determination to complete our journey without missing any of it, or at least as little as possible. This trek was not over, far from it.
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