I decide to leave my car in Spiez and take the 0556 train to Interlaken before switching to the Jungfrau trains changing at Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg, this makes sense as on the return I can hop off the train at Spiez and be home earlier. This being Switzerland of course there's a fair few ski tourers boarding the train already.
This is a pretty casual but popular trip loosely organised, the basic plan is everyone meets outside the door from the Jungfraujoch complex after the first train of the day, kits up, drops into some loose groups and away you go. There's around 30 or 40 people, mostly local, turned up today so we gear up and size each other up )
It's a big glacier and the run down to Konkordiaplatz can be pretty good but today it's a bit tricky, we encounter two problems, first, the snow is boilerplate, about 10cm of ice with softer, old snow underneath and it's hard to ski, the second problem is more serious though, the visibility is so poor that some micro-navigation is needed to avoid the two large crevasses near the top of the glacier, so for a short section we're all in a line picking our way through.
Having cleared the worse of the dangers the sun comes out and we can see Konkordiaplatz and let skis run easily down to it. Konkordiaplatz is a remarkable place, it's the junction of four glaciers, the Aletschfirn, the Jungfraufirn, the Ewigschneefäld and the Grüneggfirn, it's also the start of the Aletsch glaicer and gives it's name to the "Konkordiaplatz Charter" an agreement between the local governments to protect the unique environment of the Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage site. The Aletsch Glacier is the largest in the alps in fact.
Now the climbing starts, we all stop to fix climbing skins, shed layers, top up sun cream and take a drink.
We climb for a couple of hours breaking the climb at one point to have a picnic lunch where the old boys inevitably produce hip flasks with assorted rocket fuel probably knocked up in their sheds.
Arriving at the Lötschenlücke it's pretty cold as the wind whips up over the pass so it's on with extra layers and off with the skins before starting the descent.
The descent here is marginally better than the other side, it's possible to turn without jump-turning but the snow gets progressively heavier as we're descending.
You can see (above) how the snow, acting like a fluid, has flowed over the landscape leaving patterns like the sea does on a beach.
The debris of older slides (above). We also pass the new Anenhütte which has opened up since I was last here, back in March 2007 the old hut was destroyed by an avalanche, I've not stayed at the new one but the photo's look fantastic.
By my reckoning we're able to ski about 4km further than my last time on this route, we skied to Faflenalp at 1800 or so before and called a taxi to get to Blatten, this time the road is snow covered and closed so we ski down it to Blatten, have a beer, take the bus to Goppensten (predicatably full of tourers) and hop on the train through the Lotschberg to Spiez.
Not a bad day out, something around 27 km of skiing, approx. 700m of climbing and 2500m of descent.