Extreme week ten year anniversary trip
Andermatt, Switzerland
After several years of being told how great the offpiste is in Andermatt, we decided to make it the destination for our 10 year anniversary of Extreme Week.
With the unusual weather in the Alps this year the snowpack was more unstable than usual, which made for some huge avalanches. Depth hoare is a phenomenon that causes the snow to sit on a very thin layer of ballbearing like snow, meaning that it only takes a small amounf of fresh snow to cause an avalanche. After the experience of being caught in an avalanche last year on day 1 of the Haute Route, we were suitably cautious.
The highlight was a great day of ski touring with 4 climbs and 4 fantastic descents in small amounts of powder but in incredibly surroundings with no0one around.
Day 3 meant a short train ride up the valley. Upon departing we were able to put our skis on straight away and begin what was a very hot climb in the early morning. It was actually already avalanching on the oppposite valley so we climbed faster than usual at a rate of about 300m per hour.
Towards the middle of the week we decided to do a heli to the sustenhorn.
This ended up being an epic day with two heli drops and descents down the most impressive glaciers. we hooked up with an additional guide for this day. He turned out to be a guide in the old fashioned mode, i.e. would happily lower you down cliff faces with his bear hands rather then waste time with a belay plate. A great day out as you can see from the photos.
A long run out down a walking track only lightly covered with snow made for an interesting descent once we got below the tree line. All skis now in bad need of a full service!
Overall a great week, probably two of the days were amongst the top ten best days of all time. Heli day and Sustenhorn.
Filed under: Extreme Week 2010, Uncategorized
