Glacier-hiking in Zinal, Switzerland

This year, I luckily had a chance to go glacier-hiking in Zinal, Switzerland.  I had only gone once before about 3 years ago. In all honesty, it was beyond my comfort zone.

I enjoy hiking and have been a member of a mountaineering group since university. I have even gone hiking on the Annapurna circuit, with the highest point I reached being the Thorung La Pass at about 17,700 feet (5394 meters), but I guess, ice and snow are not really my element and the thought of crevasses puts a lump in my throat.

As a precursor to the hike, we watched a film on Killian Jornet called the Summits of My Life.  Killian is a famed extreme athlete, practically bagging all the most challenging and difficult mountain ultramarathons on earth.  The film relates that after having won all these races, his next quest was to climb alpine-style with minimum resources, some of the most difficult summits in Europe in deep snow, involving hiking then skiing.  I guess seeing him so alive and in the moment -- with one segment showing him running like a gazelle over thigh-deep snow and mountain ridges in running shoes, a pair of shorts and a flimsy-looking windbreaker, and another segment on top of a huge mountain and fearlessly going over the edge and skiing down its steep side -- gave me pause on all the fears I had.

I have to stop being so afraid -- fear stops one from living, from being in the here and now.  It is not to say that one becomes brash and overconfident, there has to always be that deep humility and respect for nature and the elements.  In one scene, Killian is seen lovingly running his hand over a flat rock on a steep mountainside and placing his cheek on its surface, as if saying he and the rock are one, and for mother nature to keep him in its embrace.  In the film, we meet Stephane, another extreme skier who we find out later has met his fate on the mountain. We accept the risks that goes with a life lived to the full.

We start our walk in the dark at 5:30 am from a parking lot in Grimentz, and reach the mountain hut, Cabane de Moiry at 2825 meters at 7 am. From here, we hike a short way through rocks to reach the start of the ice and snow field.  Here we put on our crampons, bring out our ice axes, rope up -- connecting 4 people per rope via harnesses, and start our walk through the glacier arriving at the summit of Pigned de la Le after 4 hours, at 11 am.  The 360 degree vistas of mountaintops are breathtaking.

Roped up on the glacier

Pigne de la Le summit

My glacier hike to Pigne de la Le was surely not even a hundredth of the difficulty of Killian's challenges but it was an attempt to go beyond what I thought I was capable to do. I guess that is one thing that one must always seek -- for indeed, you can do much more than you think you can.  But you must believe it and you must believe in yourself.