AIC Weekend (4-5th August 2007)

As a preparation for the upcoming glacier travel on the 'Grosser Aletschgletscher' some mates of Reto had organised an Alpine Instruction Course. When I heard about it I reckoned it would be a good chance to get up to date again and thus I tailed along.
We drove over to Austria on Friday afternoon and hiked up to the Wiesbadener mountain hut (2443m) where we would be based for the weekend.













Day 1 involved getting to know the gear, putting on crampons, roping up, followed by some hiking on the glacier to get used to glacier travel. "Hey, your rope's too slack!"
This short excursion brought us up to the Vermuntpass (2797m) where we got onto Swiss territory again, if only for a short scroggin break just a few metres across the border!

Hiking back to the hut after an afternoon on the Vermunt Glacier (see background).



















The team:
Birte, Reto, Bettina, Steffen, Andy (Yeah, that's me!), Christoph, Marco and Guido.



Day 2 started a wee bit earlier, not an alpine start though, however, we had an agreeable ascent in the still cool air and then started to rope up for a bit of glacier travel up to the Obere Ochsenscharte (2977m). It was here that Marco, the leader of this weekend, discovered to his dismay that he had somehow forgotten or lost is crampons! He tramped back to the hut to look for them and I used the time to play around with my new ice screws and to show the others how to set up anchors and backing them up.


Two other parties making their way towards the Obere Ochsenscharte.


We then proceeded to the pass as planned and had a lunch including a good view over the crevasses on the other side. Then back to the hut for some second lunch/dessert followed by a hike out. Tons of people on the trail today!
Everyone was happy with the training weekend and is looking forward to the real glacier trekking coming up soon!