Last weekend, me and Flo paid an old friend of us, Paul, a visit in Frutigen. We were welcomed with a delicious meal – that would have fed another 10 people. Some beers later, we tried to figure out the tour for next day and found the perfect one for the current conditions: Up it’s north face atop the Grossstrubel (3243 m). So the next day we teamed up with Sonja, a coworker of Paul, drove down the valley to Adelboden to take a cable car up to a small ski resort nearby at about 1900 m. Our selection tourned out to be perfect as everywhere below that altitude, grass was the main ground condition. The tour itself was quite exhausting – at least as a snow shoe climbing one. As there had been only 3 people in front of us – that at least laid the track – Flo and I struggled a lot with the snow shoe sinking and slipping 5-15 cm into the snow with each step. Paul and Sonja regularly ran away with their skis. This has definitely been one of the few tours I was wishing for skis our a splitboard. So we slowly toiled ourselves up the track and the time ran away. At some point, Sonja managed to drop her helmet and we couldn’t do anything but watching it wobbling away. Maybe this rock there will stop it? No .. If we’re lucky, this .. No. Maybe .. No. We decided to search for it when we ride down. Then I found out that I must have lost my camera’s pouch somewhere at the lift station – at least only filled with a spare battery and a cable. After a couple of hours, we reached the tour’s crux, about 300 m below the peak. Conditions were quite fine but we decided to turn around at that point. Time was running short and crampons or at least an ice pick would have been a good thing to be brought. Even though the snow was no powder anymore, the downhill was a blast! Awesome terrain, soft snow, no ice or crust and almost virgin except for 2 tracks. That was definitely worth the toiling and losses – we haven’t found neither the helmet nor the camera pouch. Anyway, good to have seen Paul again and that downhill was absolutely sweet.
Out Somewhere 