Friday: Mutthornhütte Descent

On Friday morning, we woke up at Mutthornhütte, located 2900 metres (over 9000 feet) above sea level. We folded our mattresses, packed our bags, and went downstairs to a breakfast of oatmeal, toast, and hot chocolate. At around 8:00 or so, we ventured outside, put on our glacier gear, and headed off on our descent.

On the way up, we walked the langth of the Kanderfirn Glacier, while on the way down we were to walk across the ice mass and over the Petersgrat (grat is ridge in German). After a couple hours of walking across snow and fixing people's crampons, we made it to the ridge, 3200 metres in the air (that's 10,500 feet for those who still cling to the Imperial system). We later determined that the ridge was part of the European continental divide -- rivers to the north flow into the North Sea, while those to the south flow into the Mediterranean.

The way down to the other side went rather quickly, as the slope was quite steep. We made it to the bottem of the glacier without too much problem, with the exception of a couple falls and someone's crampon coming off. Once we reached rock again, we stopped for lunch and made our way down to the Lötschental Valley. It proved to be quite trecherous, as the path was not very visible and it was a steep slope down. Finally, after about five hours of hiking, we made it to Falferalp, where we caught the bus to Goppenstein and the train under the mountain back to Kandersteg.

That night, we had the International Campfire, which was a series of skits and songs by the various scout groups attending as well as the staff (referred to as Pinkies because of the colour of their shirt). We performed our perrenial favourite skit, "If Your Scoutmaster Ran on Microsoft Windows", this time updated for Vista. It went over very well with the crowd, despite the rain. In fact, while writing this, a couple of people came up and complimented us on the skit.

Right now, most of the troop is at Blümlisalphütte. I'm having to stay back due to the fact that I strained a muscle while Mountaineering on Wednesday. I managed to make it through the glacier hike, though my leg was in pain by the time we reached the bottom. However, I'm hopefully going to be able to make it to the Fründenhütte portion of the hike tomorrow. So the next time I'll be making a post will probably be Monday night.