I COULD HARDLY STOP SHIVERING. The wind howled
and another plume of spindrift blasted through the entrance
of our snow cave, coating the foot of my sleeping bag and then
slowly starting to melt, saturating the already soggy down.
Leaving bivvy bags behind had been a rookie mistake. Then
again, we were rookies.
The idea of spending a night in a snow hole had sounded
great the previous afternoon, when my brother James and I had
discussed it at the sun-drenched Zermatt campsite. We had our
first Alpine peak all planned out. Although Mettelhorn (3405m)
is not one of the great mountains of the Alps, the guidebook
recommended it as an ideal first climb in the Zermatt area – and
perfect for beginning the process of acclimatising to high altitude.
I was 21 years old, James just 18, and we had ambitions. Before
taking on Castor, Pollux or Lyskamm, though – big, serious 4000m
peaks – we had to start with something a little more modest. The
ascent of Mettelhorn involved a steep walk ascending some 1500m
from our valley base, a short glacier crossing, and a final rocky
trudge to the summit. It sounded perfect, but to make it feel more
like a big mountain we decided to split the climb in two with a
snow hole on the glacier overnight. Simple, right?
Our first mistake was failing to check snow conditions or
look at the weather forecast. Our second was to leave bivvy bags
at the campsite to save weight. By the time we’d climbed to the top
of the Triftchumme, a rubble-filled gorge overshadowed by the
glacier snouts of Zinalrothorn and Ober Gabelhorn, cloud had
filled in and a cold wind blew down from the intimidating heights
above us. There was far more snow (and at lower elevations) than
the “small patch of névé” the guidebook had led us to expect.
But we set to work excavating our snow cave anyway, after
finding a suitable spot where the snow pack lying on top of the
glacier met a ridge of moraine. If you’ve ever tried to dig a snow
hole without a shovel, you’ll know that it’s a long, tiring job; we
took it in shifts, scraping and hacking with our ice axes. Eventually
we hit a 45º slope of rock-hard ice and could dig no more. The
resulting shelter was hardly a palace, but it was big enough for the
two of us and would keep us warm and snug – or so we foolishly
hoped.
Digging had occupied us for hours. Only as the light began to
fail did we really stop to look around and consider the fact that
we were about to spend the night at over 3000m. Doubt warred
with youthful optimism for a while in my head, perhaps tinged
with all those tales of mountain epics I’d read about in the annals
of the Victorian pioneers. The weather had deteriorated further.
Cloud swirled around us, obliterating all views except in rare
moments when a tattered window would peel open and grant us
fantastical, dreamlike visions of crevasses and seracs in a jumble,
as high above our heads as Scafell Pike was above Wastwater.
Although the silence remained absolute, eerie even, I imagined
that the mountains growled and whispered amongst themselves, a
gaggle of trolls wondering what to do with these novices who had
blundered into their kingdom. It had all seemed so simple back at
the campsite. But now, as the first snowflakes started to whirl and
we shuffled into our snow cave to make ourselves comfortable,
I felt exposed and tiny and a long way out of my depth.
Neither of us slept much. The roof of the cave sagged and
dripped on us, turning our sleeping bags into soggy lumps.
I’d never shivered so much or so intensely in my life. Snow blasted
through the entrance and covered our gear, despite attempts to
plug the hole with our packs. I couldn’t stay comfortable on the
45º slope we were forced to lie on, and kept sliding down into the
slushy puddle at my feet. We were hungry too; I’d repeated to James
what I’d read about appetite being diminished at altitude, so we’d
only brought a small pack of couscous to split between us, and it
hadn’t been enough.
But dawn came eventually, as it always does, and we crawled
from our pit to see a world renewed. Several inches of fresh snow
lay on the old pack that had been so late to melt that spring. And
high above us, Mettelhorn’s summit pyramid – now visible against
a uniform steel sky – looked like a Scottish mountain after aThe Great Outdoors August 2019 67