Schönbiel - The Mayhem's Blog

This being the final day meant we could take things a lot easier, we had a nice lay in and didn’t have breakfast until 7 am. We paid up which was ~CHF400 for 3 of us with a few beers the previous afternoon and got ready to leave. We said farewells to a few others leaving before us whom we’d met on the route i the huts over the previous days. Our bags felt quite heavy today as they had everything inside this time rather than wearing harnesses etc added to the exhaustion from the previous days walking.

The route down from the hut to Zermatt was very straight forward just following the marked path over glacier moraine, through grassy parts and finally into the pine forest. There are a number of signs which show 2 routes to Zermatt, strangely the only difference being the direction of the train on the sign! We took the shorter option, which is straight down the valley rather then an up and over route ending up further north in the town.

Path signpost with times — Two choices of how long you wanted to take to get to Zermatt

Continue reading “Classic Haute Route Day 6 – Schönbiel Hut to Zermatt”

It was another early start with breakfast at around 5 am, unfortunately it was quite disappointing, there wasn’t enough Orange juice or milk, both of which were just in a carton in the middle table. There didn’t seem to be anyone around to bring out some more stuff unlike the other huts. Overall this was the worst hut for hospitality we ended up staying at, the views are great but the guardian and hosts seemed grumpy and annoyed you were in their hut. We ate the bread with jam and some cereal with a little splash of milk and got ready to head off, it was a perfect morning with a clear skies and the no wind at all.

Sun rising behind Matterhorn from Bertol Hut

We set off down the ladders to the east side of the Col and got roped up ready for the glacier crossing. There was a clear track across the Glacier du Mont Minè south south east towards the Col des Bouquetins We then headed East up the Glacier towards Tête Blanche. As it was a clear night and morning the snow was very crisp and made for quite easy walking, crevasses were fairly easy to spot but well covered on our way up to Tête Blanche. Once on the Col de la Tête Blanche we headed up towards the summit across the bergschrund, which was a bit slushy and had a few holes (probably from the 70 Belgian Scouts the previous day). It was a short walk over the flat snow towards the summit (3707m) where we untied for summit photos and to enjoy the perfect views over the Matterhorn and surrounding ranges.

Continue reading “Classic Haute Route Day 5 – Bertol Hut to Schönbiel Hut”