The cozy Chamanna Coaz is already half an hour behind us, the crampons are mounted and we are looking for a viable path through the wild furrowed glacier. It's cold and it's windy. We are making good progress, despite the rope size of seven summit aspirants.
Anyone who has ever done wild things, then comes with simple routes better clear
The tour to La Muongia (3415m) is indeed indicated with "PD" (little difficult) in the guide, but this review says nothing about the risk of splitting. There are plenty of crevasses, as we seek our way through the rupture zone and want to go from the east to the summit. "Anyone who has ever done wild things, then comes with simple routes better clear" says our guide Markus and guide us with trained eye through the splits. We cross below the distinctive needle to the east, rise to about 3280m, just below the Fuorcla del Glüschaint, and rest there in the sun, far above the rupture zone.
Climber school
A mountain mate was not well and he was already so exhausted that we renounce the summit and descend below it to the west. I took over the leadership of the roped party, and under guidance and consultation with Markus we finally reached safely the eastern wall of Il Chapütschin. Here we rest again on the sun-warmed stones and found that this is an optimal practice area for column recovery.
Fix the fuses and Hintersicher fuses turned into the ice and practiced the pulley, the Swiss pulley and the self-rescue, until our arms hurt and drove us the oncoming cold in the normal way back into the warm cabin.
Conclusion
Even without a summit a glacier glacier tour with many instructive details, especially of course the leadership of a rope team! Finding the "right" pace is almost impossible with such a size of rope, and promptly I was too fast, sometimes too slow. Also the eye for the environment was trained: not only columns below, also Seracs above are to be avoided, the latter are faster to cross, columns below carefully and best as little steep as possible. To descend in the fall line is sometimes better than zigzag - and a lot more - beyond a certain steepness.
Far too late we arrive at the hut and, now again less nervous, hutkeeper Alois serves us self-shot deer. And the world is alright again.
