Swiss Alps part 1 - Departure to Joderhorn

The trip didn't get off to the best of starts as I concocted near-terminal manflu two days before we were due to leave. This left me confined to bed, in a retching, mucusy, sweaty mess with zero Alpine psyche. Still Thursday evening arrived, the housewifemobile was shoehorned full of stuff, and James and I headed off down to Dover with James in the pilot seat so I could continue convolescing.

We rolled onto the midnight ferry in good time. It looked like a refugee camp as we wandered around with sleeping people and abandoned children everywhere. We got an unhelpful hour of sleep sat on some stools before we docked at Dunkerque and the roadtrip continued. We drove about an hour through Belgium before finding a service area around 0400 and grabbed some kip in the car.

We set off again around 0900 and drove down through Belgium and into Luxembourg where we paid a luxurious £1 a litre for diesel - winnAr! \o/ Luxembourg is weird - everything's sold in huge quantities: buckets of tobacco, vats of Nuttella!


On we continued, through the rain, down through France and finally over the border into Switzerland.

As we drove down into the mountains we discovered the satnav was taking us onto a surprise car-train which it called a 'ferry' - exciting times!


I can remember riding on this car train when I lived in Switzerland age 8. Out the other side of the mountain it was bright skies and no rain and we drove on down, then up, into the Saas valley where we rendezvoused with Allan, Lillian, Keith and Carol at the campsite. We were treated to a sit-down meal with wine in their enormotent before we shuffled off to bed. A fine end to 12hrs driving!

We got up relatively late on Saturday and drove up to Mattmark dam which is at the top of the Saas valley at 2180m. Forecast wasn't too great so we planned on doing an easy walk up to a col at 2860m to check out a massive gold Madonna statue (religious, not popstar), grab a coffee at the lift station on the other side in Italy, and maybe grab a 3000m peak up from the col depending on the weather. We got up to the statue in a swift 1hr 40m where it was cold, snowing and cloudy, had a really nice coffee in Italy and then went and fought our way up the Joderhorn (3035m) in poor visibility. It was very Scottish!


It's the snowy peak on the left.

Some nice scrambling up snow covered rock to get to the summit. We then retraced our steps to the col and charged on back down to the dam. It was a good seven hour day on the hill and my knees generally felt fine - I was pretty much running down at the end of the day!

Weather was cold last night and the snow level has dropped to around 2500m. It's bright and windy this morning but still freezing cold! It feels like late Autumn! We're going to check the forecast for tomorrow and if all looks good head up to the Britannia hut this afternoon and go do the Alallinhorn tomorrow which would be our first 4000m peak, like evAr! =oD


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Location:ZE Löübinu,Saas-Grund,Switzerland