Pushing Time on the Portjengrat

Switzerland, August 2022

by Andy Cloquet

Sleep is frequently a frustrating experience in an alpine hut. The mix of altitude, a three hour walk to a hut in 26ºC, and anticipation of the intended climb awaiting a pre-dawn start are unsettling ingredients.

Add a well-oiled person, ignorant of custom and civility, flopping onto the bunk platform beside me some two hours after the Almagellerhütte’s guests were well asleep, and his drunken snoring put paid to any chance of slumber. All the while, my partner Louise Waters remained motionless, cocooned in her silk bag on her patch of the platform whilst I could only watch the miniscule changes in our position from the few stars I could see from the Matratzenlager window. The alarm at 04.00 still came as a shock but soon, full of bread and tea, we were picking up our prepared rucksacks and spying the first few markers of our route through a light haze of drifting mists.

This route, to the east of the Saas valley in Switzerland, had been on my ever-changing list of dream routes for years. I recall a conversation in the Rod & Reel, Crianlarich, with current and past members of the Ochil Mountaineering Club including Davey Sadler and Jim Shanks, where I was listening to their memories of Alpine routes. Over the years, the South-North traverse of the Pizzo d’Andolla (3654m) via the Portjengrat (Grade UIAA IV+(optional crux V)) frequently surfaced from my mind’s depths, especially when I first went to Saas Fee and Saas Grund with Jere Scott. Our plans then didn’t include the Portjengrat as we were to traverse the SE ridge of Weissmies, but having full sight of it, the route was much more than simply an interesting option and one that became very doable in 2022.

Both the original Lindsay Griffin guidebook description, and one I had found in translation from Italian on the SAC website, strangely underplay the enormity of the route. In just over 1km, this ridge packs more climbing and seriously exposed, delicate traversing than the 10km of The Cuillin Ridge; especially when one sentence, “The rest of the ridge is easy at first then straightens up and again presents a whole series of towers, generally overhanging on the Italian side and slabby on the Swiss side” contributes to at least half of the climb!

Having made the traverse of vast scree fields and the ascent to the Port (3295m) – a v-shaped slot in the ridge just above the col between the Mittelrück and Portjenhorn – I messed our timings during the first three UIAA III pitches as I followed a party in front, only to find as I re-routed onto the ridge that they were, in their own words, ‘rather scared’ and were abseiling off. Louise remained patient and we quickly established a rapport, and I mirrored her apparent confidence in our partnership as we hit the ridge with Italy swathed in mist to our right, and Portjengrat creating the boundary with Switzerland’s sun.

The guidebook’s “bristling gendarmes” of “magnificent golden Gneiss” were fabulous and, although we didn’t climb them all, the increasing difficulty to UIAA IV+ was certainly apparent until we reached the optional crux. Again, I let the team down with a poor reading of the rock which meant I wasted 40 minutes in an overhanging corner which exited onto a bald slab. With Louise fortunately out of earshot, I explored further around the tower to my right and found a superb 20m vertical groove. This was intensely more exposed but more straightforward at UIAA V, and to add spice it was suspended above a 2000m drop into Italy. In the image, the arrow to Louise’s left is pointing out a slot in the slab where I had tried to come through previously.

Then there was more, much more; traversing, in six 30m-pitches, the top edges of monstrous slabs, each sweeping down to the now non-existent snowfields which once skirted the ridge. In turn, the slabs were linked by short, nippy, steep grooves, walls and towers with only one or two pitons indicating the complex and time-consuming route to the last gendarme and Portjenhorn summit.

An abseil ring below the summit helped make quick work of the 20m slab, and slick we were too, as, without even a word exchanged, we threaded the ring and pulled the rope as if we had run this routine before. No fankles, simply a smooth sharing of ropework as we each re-coiled and tied-off eight loops and started to move together towards the ‘fun park’ of the final four gendarmes.

Seriously convoluted climbing was needed to pass the last of the granite policeman where there was a steep slab capped by a low roof – thankfully gifting a good crack for protection – which ended abruptly with a huge drop-off and an upright flake of rock across the gap. The move was, from my crouched position, a long stretch to catch the top of the flake and a ‘simple’ launch across so that my stomach lay on top of the rock. There followed either a very high step over with my foot at head height or, for speed’s sake, a roll over the top onto the small stance. Nimbly followed by Louise, we then took stock of our descent route and phoned the hut to tell them of our very late return.

The descent was a seemingly endless traverse across vast acres of now de-frosted glacial soils overlain with loose slabs of slate which shifted at the slightest hint of human movement. How the chamois we’d seen was able to prance across similar slabs higher up with such balletic agility, was a wonder to see. Between us, though, and on our now tired legs, we continued to keep our 100% record of avoiding knocking rocks off. On the final 100m of height loss we were treated to lines of glacially smoothed ribs which we could follow to the marked path. And so, towards bed, before which we were fed by the hut staff, who were at the point of closing the kitchen. After a wry smile and comment from the Hüttenwirt about how parties need to work extra-fast in order to climb anywhere near the guidebook time, I quietly went to my allotted spot and slept, this time undisturbed.

I’m in awe of the alpinists who first created the route in 1947; tricounis, hemp rope and carrying the steel hardware for crossing the snowfields! I am also hugely grateful that Louise should have agreed to partner me on the route, and then further big climbs later in the week. And ‘thank you’, Davey, for your first introduction to the route so many years ago; not all alcohol filled nights end in overblown ideas!

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