If breakfast wouldn’t have been at 6:30, we would have probably stayed in bed longer, as outside was only thick fog again. We set off at half past 8 anyway and made our way down towards the glacier. Through somewhat challenging terrain, we walked along the moraine, seeing the glacier and the river of melting ice just in front of us. We crossed that river over a simple wooden bridge and continued through a grey valley of boulders and rocks and snow patches and glaciers that looked like walking on the moon.
This black and white film continued for another hour until an enormous canyon with a melting water river about 60 meters beneath us turned up in front of us. It was breathtaking to cross it over the metal bridge in the fog.
The black and white surrounding changed abruptly when we walked up a very steep rock path towards a small mountain crest behind which everything was suddenly green and some sheep were standing on the grass. Even the fog was a little less on this altitude and we could see parts of our surrounding.
Now that Flora and Fauna were back, I also saw some black alpine amphibians and lots of toxic blue monkshood along the way.
After another hour through the fog, the roughest patch (the “queen’s stage”) of the tour started. From around 1900 m, we had to climb up towards our next hut on 2880m. At first we went straight up on something like a very steep crest and through muddy rocks with some grassy spots and small rivers of melting water.
After we had climbed for about 45 minutes, the stairs started. The terrain was so rocky and steep, that steps somewhere between a ladder and a stairway were there to make it climbable, generally combined with a rope to get some extra security. I am absolutely sure that the views and path would have been crazy spectacular if we could have seen any more than the next 4 meters in front of us. But even like this, I couldn’t stop taking photos.
With landscape-viewing not being an option, I started counting the wooden stairs. When I reached 593, the Blüemlisalp hut was standing in front of me on the top of the comb.
As always, we had been much too quick and therefore arrived much too early at 12:20. I could have easily walked on for another 3 or 4 hours but hut reservations cannot be changed at such short notice and the tour had been planned like this. This time we couldn’t even sit in the sun on the terrace.
We checked in and were told that our dorm was the winter dorm and in the freezing basement of the hut. Only the dinner room was warm enough to stay there for the rest of the day because food was prepared on a fire stove. My hope of having a shower was also greatly disappointed as there was nothing again. Two toilets and a minimal lavatory inside and two toilets outside for the 120 people that found a sleeping place in this hut tonight. The water with which we did a very basic wash, felt like it had just flown out of the closest glacier (which was probably true, as it wasn’t drinking water either). My hair were starting to get the typical hair-consistency you know from homeless people or friends that just came back from a hitchhiking trip, but putting my head under 2°C-water would have been suicidal.
We got a warm meal for lunch and the afternoon began to pass by very slowly with a certain disappointment, annoyance (because this was one of the kitchens you really had to make death threats so they would take gluten free seriously) and boredom. I actually read almost half a book about early female mountaineering pioneers in history which was very interesting.
Dinner came at half past 6 and was okay in the end. And even the clouds vanished just enough to see the very close-by glacier and peak. I walked to the very edge of the glacier and watched this incredible phenomenon glow in the evening sun.
Afterwards, we sat in the common room playing SAC hut memory with a French and an American guy until bedtime.
