Internet Edition




Issue 10
Spring 2000

Training for the Matterhorn

At last the summit in sight, just up this last slope. Just a few more slow footsteps. No more climbing needed now. The rising ground gives way to a panoramic view over the mountain ranges and below I can see …. a huge industrial estate complete with tall chimneys belching black smoke. Must they ruin every wilderness?

I wake up. Its all been a horrible dream, I hope the only such dream like that I have before the big day ahead. With a sigh, I get out of bed, oh no it's the weekend again! I've really got to push myself back into my punishing training schedule. On the weekends Saturday and Sunday it's Pen y Fan route, complete with a weighted rucksack and fully shanked rigid 'Herman Munster specials' mountaineering boots. Slippers they are not.

My weekends have been like this for weeks now, gradually building up the weight, time and distance I train at. The weeknights are much the same, on the stepper, on the exercise bike, hours of it.

As I train the same thoughts repeatedly surface in my mind. It's going to be a really big gamble this ascent. Am I fit? Yes probably. But I've never been higher than Benn Nevis before some four and a half thousand feet above sea level. And now I'm taking on a 14,500 foot alpine peak with a well-deserved killer reputation.

Through the hateful training the same thoughts. So many links in the chain have to hold together on the day. Not too much wind, not too much snow, physical fitness, acclimatisation to altitude. I am determined whatever the weakness in the chain will be, it will not be my fitness that ruins the summit bid for me.

I walk on. Other thoughts surface. I've attended a Gwent Mountaineering talk about the ascent of the Matterhorn. The talker was happy, he topped out last year. But it took him seven attempts to do it. Would I have the motivation to train like this and to save for this twice, three times until I'm successful? And what would Rachel say. This time round she's been very understanding. And that's how it was, the training. Total commitment to being fitter than I had ever been before.

But eventually the time came. After a trains, planes and automobiles experience I found myself in a chocolate box Swiss chalet, part of an eight man Matterhorn Summit team for July 1999. Just in time for my fortieth birthday.

I spend four days climbing up onto 11,000 feet ridges, sleeping overnight in mountain retreats, getting up before dawn to beat the sunrays on the ice-fields. Am I fit enough? I have doubts. I'm really struggling with the altitude, not the expected headaches but the lack of breath. This is really hard.

The day is here.

We are woken up by the refuge warden entering our dorm with a head-torch on. It's black. It's 3.30am. We wordlessly rush to put on our climbing harnesses and wolf down a quick breakfast of cereal and water.

Everything is done in a rush. We rope up inside the refuge. We walk out into the darkness to be met by a diamond starlit sky. To my right silhouette a huge black jagged tooth. The Hornli ridge of the Matterhorn. We walk on in the small circles of light from our head torches, towards the steps and handholds on the rock. Above me, in the distance, in the darkness I hear rocks falling….

Did Roger make it to the top? He's giving a Matterhorn talk at the Oddfellows on Tuesday, March 28th.

Scaling one of Europe's greatest peak's is gruelling and tough. And that's before you get to the mountain! Roger Gimblett explains.

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