At around 4pm the night before, Colin, Derek and myself decided to make our Eiger push the following day. That meant a bit of a scramble the night before in terms of getting gear together, going over rope systems, buying food, and getting psyched.
The plan was to start early (but not insanely early) on Monday and make the climb from our doorsteps at the Airbnb in Grindewelwald, up past Ostegghutte, onto Mitelleggi ridge, and arrive at Mitellegihutte. Around 4:30am our alarm clocks went off, we packed our remaining items (mainly toiletries and sleeping bags), choked down some breakfast and were out the door.
The crew was as follows:
Colin Simon: Colin is a data scientist and splits his time between Carbondale and Boulder, and has the most peaks and snow experience under his belt, including multiple NIAD (Nose in a Day) climbs on El Cap.
Derek Wright: Son of famed “Satan’s Minion’s” founder Bill Wright, Derek has been climbing trad since he could walk and spends almost all of his waking hours either working on satellites for Papa Jeff (Amazon), scrambling in the Flatirons, or plugging cams in Eldo.
Armin (something): Armin is a a happily unemployed travel nurse with a history of hard trad climbs in Eldo and 100 mile ultras (one of which he completed about a week prior to this trip). He is functioning as the trip dad.
We left Minihutte (the name given to our tiny airbnb) and started hiking up the road until we hit the trailhead. Climbing the Eiger is cool…being able to climb it directly from your house is pretty awesome.
The hike started out on a road, and the sweat started pouring off of us immediately. Grindelwald is pretty humid, and I realized I had already gone through my first soft flask bottle before we even hit the trailhead. Lucky for us - and although Grindelwald is apparently in a drought - there was water aplenty, including carved out logs full of drinkable water along the first portion of the trail, as well as glacial streams that we could drink straight from.
Fiji water doesn’t have shit on Grindelwald glacial runoff, in my humble opinion.
We continued hiking up with Armin until he finally split off. The trail was steep and stout, and we would often come across bolted, 1/2 inch think wires to hold onto during steeper parts (we would later see that the Swiss love bolting, drilling, and putting up ropes whenever things get mildly difficult - this flies in stark contrast to the US ethic). We said our goodbyes to Armin and trudged onwards and upwards to Osteghutte, completing our first more serious via ferrata and plopping our packs down outside of the hut.
Osteghutte was beautiful, and situated on a small plateau on an otherwise seriously steep cliff side. Constructed of pine, walking inside and smelling reminded me very much of the cabins I lived in at summer camp in my youth (though the lack of axe body spray masking 14 year-old boy body odor was noticeably absent).
Two younger Swiss men were inside sipping coffee, and immediately put on a pot for us for which we graciously accepted. They had the goal of climbing the eiger, but due to a combination of altitude sickness and lack of fitness, decided this wasn’t their year. We sipped our coffee outside, looking down at Grindelwald. We had already climbed approximately 4,200 ft, and with our larger packs full of climbing gear, ropes, water and food, welcomed the break. We knew we still had 3,400 feet to climb to make it to Mittellegihutte, our home for the night.
Knowing this, we trudged back on, scrambling up talus and choss field after talus and choss field until we finally met the ridge. This was a moment worth taking in, as once you are on the ridge you take it more or less the entire way to the hut unlike, say, Hornli ridge on the Matterhorn. Once on the ridge, you can also see down to the south side of the Eiger, and the massive expanse of glacial fields and mountains that make up the Swiss Alps. It really was an incredible sight, being on this narrow ridge, looking north and seeing Grindelwald on one side, and massive, snow-capped peaks to the south.
I also couldn’t help but think of Samwise and Frodo, and how fit they must have been by the end of their journey (these are altitude thoughts).
We scrambled up nthe ridge for what seemed like an eternity until we had to pull the rope out for the first time. We had been scrambling without a rope for the entirety. I found myself feeling very grateful for where I live and having the Flatirons as a training ground. When it comes to moving fast over technical rock without a rope, there is hardly a better place to cut your teeth. The access, quality of rock, and varying terrain make the Flatirons the perfect training ground for a mission like this which is time-sensitive, and the faster you climb the safer you often are (as is the case anywhere in the alpine).
We did pull out the rope, however, when we reached two pitches we didn’t want to solo, both rated 5.9. Colin took the lead here, gracefully navigating the rock, pulling himself over a small traverse and crimping up to an awkward belay ledge which led to the next pitch.
Derek and I followed, albeit extremely awkwardly. We had decided that in order to save weight we would just bring one pair of rock shoes, so we began up the wall in our clunky mountaineering boots, desperately trying to smear and jam our way up the wall. I tied into the rope at the halfway point on a double figure eight on a bite, and Derek took the end of the rope as one would normally climb. Eventually we both made it up, climbed the next pitch as well, and were on our way, happy that the hardest climbing was now behind us.
We trudged onwards, delicately but quickly moving across the rock until at last we had made it to Mitellegihutte!
Continued in next post…
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