Monch

July 2019

The Monch is part of the Berner Oberland trilogy. Together with the Jungfrau and Eiger it dominates the view in many parts of northern Switezrland. It’s visibility and accessibility from Bern makes it a popular target. If you climb in the season you will meet many climbers on the way up and down.

The Jungfrau Joch train takes you up till about 3500 meters, meaning you only need to climb up the last 500 meters. The route is not hard and rather easy to find.

I went along with a colleague of mine and his friends for a week holiday in Switzerland. A family member of one of his friends owned a house near Bern. The idea was to combine this trip with the ascend of one or two mountains in Berner Oberland. We were with 8 people of which 4 wanted to climb. No one had any climbing experience whatsoever so I was forced to split the group into two. The first party, consisting of Martijn, Pim and me would climb Monch.

We left the day before the climb and took the insanely expensive train to Jungfrau Joch. The train takes you to the final stop on top of a ridge between Junfrau and Monch. Once there we were caught in a Disney winter wonderland crowded with tourists from all corners in the world. Predominantly Indians. Martijn remarked that after having seen this he could not imagine that climbing Monch would be hard. The Monch Jochs Hutte was a rather flat 20 minutes walk. I was feeling the altitude a little so I took some rest and woke up for dinner. I was a bit tense, as the others had never been up a mountain before.

The Monchs Joch Hutte lies right at the foot of Munch. We could therefore did not have to wake up all too early. At around 6 am we had breakfast and at 7 we were on our way.

There had been a bit of fresh snow in the last few days, but the track up to Monch was still visible. The first part of the climb was a simple slalom up a semi-steep rock face. Martijn was already getting cocky by the ease of it all.

As the sun began to rise the weather worsened. We were getting near the ridge and the route got a bit vaguer. The idea of turning back started to pop-up in my head. We took a slightly wrong turn at some point. We should have climbed the steep rock up to the ridge. Instead of doing that we kept altitude following a more unstable route. I realized our mistake and climbed back to the ridge via some mixed terrain. It was really misty at this point and it was the scariest part of the climb.  Once on top of the ridge we needed to climb some semi-steep snow. It was quite easy and we quickly came closer to the top. We met up with a couple of Swiss people also on their way to the top. It were the first other climbers we met and under the current weather conditions it was nice to know there was more folk on the route.

The ridge got very narrow. This indicated the final section to the top. Pim and Martijn were visibly intimidated by the narrow snow ridge, but we were able to move rapidly and before we knew it we reached the summit.

Right at the moment we reached the top the clouds broke allowing us commanding views over the enormous glaciers and distant mountains south of us.

We descended via the narrow ridge via which we came. This time the weather was collaborating and we could see the enormous depths right below us.

It did not take long or the clouds rolled back in again. The way down, as usual with inexperienced climbers, took longer then the way up. This time we were forced to look down while climbing making it a scarier experience. I fixed the rope at a few points, but there were no dangerous passages.

On the way down we met a lot of people on their way up, apparently most people climb it as a day trip coming up with the Jungfrau Joch train, Causing quite a few traffic jams later in the day.