METHS

MULANJE EXPATRIATES THREEPEAKS SOCIETY

HOME | NEWS | MEETS | REPORTS | MEMBERSHIP | CONTACT

Airolo, Switzerland. 30 August – 3 September, 1995

Participants:
Walk: Rupert "West Face" Roschnik (leader), Jan "Duke of York" Frøseth, Dave "Lord of the Big Ruo" Harrison, Guy "Prat of Marden" Harrison, Stuart "Socks" Leslie, Bruce "Legs" Martin, Daphne "DM³" Martin, Ian "Mad Axeman" Mason, Christina Petzold, Katja Petzold, Mike "Mad" Petzold, Verena "Muesli" Petzold, Eric "Polevault" Scott and Valerie Scott.
Airolo: Judy Harrison, Rhoda Leslie, Sadie Mason.

Seventeen brave Meths members duly pitched up at the Ristorante Ramelli, Airolo, by the evening of Wednesday, 30 August. Some courage was indeed needed, since a series of cold fronts from the north had given bad weather for the previous two weeks at least and had deposited fresh snow down to 1,700 m all around Airolo on the Monday. The restaurant/pension was well situated, in the town centre, 3-4 minutes from the station up some flights of steps and opposite a church whose bells chimed regularly every half-hour all through the night.

Welcome, briefing on the next three days, then supper and a considerable amount of beer and wine. Jan in particular was pleased with the low price of alcohol compared with his native Norway. Others had more problems with the low exchange rate of the Swiss franc compared with other currencies!

The next day, the 8.36 a.m. postal bus took 14 of us from the station up the Bedretto valley for 10 minutes to Ossasco (1,313 m), the group of houses that marked the beginning of the path to the Cristallina hut. The weather was reasonable and we climbed up through larch forests, past a farm, on to pastures and old moraines. After two hours, we reached the first snow, which further on covered most of the countryside but fortunately did not lie too deep. Great excitement in the ranks and the first snowballs started flying. By midday we reached the Swiss Alpine Club Cristallina hut (2,349 m), having made quite fast progress for a climb of over 1,000 m. The hut was comfortable, recently renovated and enlarged, and almost empty thanks to the weather: it was now cold, with some low cloud.

After a snack of soup, macaroni or rösti we left without our rucksacks on a path trodden in the snow to the Cristallina pass. Here the younger members indulged in a real snowball fight, in which not even parental authority was respected, as Mad Mike found to his cost! Rupert pointed to a snowy peak and said that was where we were now going. We trudged on for another 40 minutes through fresh snow or on windblown, icy slopes, lost the path, but safely reached the narrow summit. The sky was overcast and grey, the view reasonable, but it was the wrong summit — unnamed and 2,772 m high — not the Cima di Lago that had been intended and could now be seen in the distance. This was just as well, since it would have taken much longer there and back, with no paths visible under the snow.

On the way down, we all got wet feet from glissading down snowy couloirs and Mike received more snow down his collar. Supper was good, the night comfortable and nobody snored (or did we all sleep too soundly?).

Friday, 1 September, started cold and windy. It had even snowed half an inch during the night. We crossed to the Passo di Narèt (2,438 m) under wintry conditions. But all were in good spirits and the occasional mutter 'no worse than Scotland' could be heard. Our second peak was the Pizzo di Narèt (2,584 m), a short climb on a grassy ridge fully exposed to a strong northerly gale. Only Bruce spent more than two minutes on the summit; Dave, who had set off in shorts that morning — and every morning in fact — as he would up the Big Ruo, spent just one second on the top. He could then be seen running down again with amazing alacrity, his bare knees a strange shade of blue.

Sadly, the weather and snow conditions did not allow us even to consider trying the area's highest peak, the Cristallina (2,911 m). A short traverse took us down to the Narèt lake and up to the Sasso Nero pass (2,420 m), by which time the weather had distinctly improved. From here we descended the Peccia valley in 3-4 hours. It became warmer, sunnier and more pleasant all the way. There was a delightful picnic spot, an interesting jump across the river and a marble quarry near the end. The Mad Axeman, who at one stage decided to follow the gentle gradient of a road rather than the steeper, stony path (something about 'saving my knees for the next day') was unenlightened or should we say left in the dark by a sign saying 'Galleria non illuminata' and soon found himself stumbling through half a mile of narrow unlit tunnel by the light of a rapidly fading torch beam. Ian eventually emerged at the other end into dazzling sunlight and all was well.

At Piano di Peccia (1,034 m), we drank well-earned beer while waiting for the taxi-minibus that was to take us in two trips to Fusio. A convenient 30-foot rock provided opportunities for scrambling up and abseiling down. Bruce even managed a fierce vertical crack on the far side, on a top-rope, after Rupert had given up.

The 20-minute drive to Fusio (1,289 m), with its dozen of more hairpin bends, by 65-year old Signora Vedova who looked as frail as Cinderella but pulled on the steering wheel with a show of strength that many envied her, was one of the highlights of the day, In Fusio, a cluster of houses perched on a hillside above a gorge, we found a delightful dormitory and terrace at the Antica Osteria Dazio. An excellent dinner, taken in a charming wood-panelled room, concluded a most memorable day, during which we had seen extremes of weather conditions but only two other hikers.

On Saturday, 2 September, we had another 1,000 m to climb to the Passo Campolungo (2,318 m), which was managed in sunny weather in about three hours. By now most of us were getting quite fit. Our intended third peak now looked fairly inaccessible — steep grass with some rocks and snow — so we traversed round and finally saw another likely summit. Although it was a long way off Rupert decided it was possible in the time and seven of us raced across and up without rucksacks, while the others adopted a more leisurely pace down to Lago Tremorgio (1,849 m), an almost circular, blue lake filling a beautiful crater-like hollow. Our third peak, as unplanned as the first one two days earlier (!), was the Poncione di Tremorgio (2,669 m) and gave superb views in all directions, especially across to Airolo and the St Gotthard pass.

Then it was a race against time to reach the cable car that would take us down to the valley from Lake Tremorgio. This cable car is run by the local hydroelectric company and took us down 900m in about seven minutes. But it seated only four at a time, so it took over half an hour to get everybody down. Mad Mike was the last one as it happened and he then only just caught the postal bus after jogging some 500m with his rucksack.

Back in Airolo, we climbed the steps up to Ramelli's to meet up with the three spouses that had spent the last three days in a less energetic manner to showers, drinks and a closing dinner after the AGM. In all, an enjoyable meet that will leave a lasting impression and some unforgettable memories with all the participants.