Switzerland. September 2000
This meet was spread
over two weeks with members coming and going like a shuttle service.
Two Bannisters and
four Woods had dropped out at the last moment and we reorganised.
"Midnight" Jack has a slightly different version I believe, having
checked into an inn in the French part of Switzerland and waited for us to
pitch up. By the time we found out where he was, he and Susanna had checked out
again. (It was advertised as a 'flexible' meet!).
In the last
newsletter, Bob "Birdman" Medland described our ascent of the
Mattstock and the famous flatulence of your editor during the descent. A couple
of days earlier, Stuart "Socks" Leslie and "Mad" Mike
tackled one of the Churfirsten, a chain of seven peaks separating the Upper
Toggenburg from the Walensee. We climbed Selun (7,233ft) in cloud. On the
summit, Socks essayed an airy traverse towards the adjacent peak. He retreated
rapidly after a brief break in the cloud revealed the sheer drop to the Walensee.
Rhoda and Verena had meanwhile completed a six-hour marathon below the peaks.
For our third peak,
Verena, Katja, Dave, Mike climbed the nearby Speer (on the advertised day, just
to keep us kosher) which, at 6,420ft, is Europe's highest conglomerate peak.
Still not satisfied,
the four of us and Oliver the geologist, spent the next night at the Sardona
Hütte in the far south of Kanton St Gallen and just beneath that Kanton's
highest peak. The hut, at c7,000ft is reached in three hours' easy walking from
St Martin after an hour's drive up a tortuous mountain track.
Mike had the squits
the next day. Was it the barley soup or the spring water we used to dilute the
whisky?
Sunday dawned crystal
clear, as fine a day as I've ever seen in the Alps. Lunchtime saw us perched on
top of Piz Dolf, Katja and Dave's first 10,000ft peak. Our ascent included an
hour on snow, crossing the edge of the Sardona Glacier. Katja had a dose of
brown knickers on the knife-edge summit ridge, on which the snow cornice gave a
false impression of width. ("I crapped it, but it wasn't as bad as Triglav," she said after she'd recovered).
The view from the
summit was worth the struggle — west to Bernese Oberland and Finsteraarhorn,
east to the Bernina Group, north to Lake Konstanz and Germany, north-east to
the Pizol which we climbed during the 1993 reunion.
The Swiss warden of
Sardona Hut has a long-lost brother in Nelson, New Zealand whom we found in the
'phone book after our return. Small world! The Sardona Hut would make a superb
venue for a future annual reunion. Watch this space. Mike "Mad"
Petzold
©
WDYFO, 2000