Wyssnollen and a tour through the Bernese Oberland

With a perfect weather window, or so we thought, we decided to head into the Bernese Oberland for a 5 day tour from the Oberaar reservoir into the Finsteraarhornhütte for some peaks before heading back out.

There was an unusual amount of snow in the area and the hut had advised us to bring snow shoes, something which is normally not the case at this time of year. We found a local shop to hire the snow shoes from, who were very confused when I rang up asking to hire show shoes!

Oberaar to Oberaarjochhütte – 7.5km, 977hm

Our first day was a relatively short day, which allowed us to faff in the morning to hire the snow shoes and drive from Täsch to the top of the Grimselpass, before swapping into one vehicle and heading up to the Oberaar reservoir. This was a very unusual road as there is only a 10 minute window for starting to drive up the pass, and another 10 minute window to drive down the pass 30 mins later.

We set off in good spirts with good weather, but very heavy bags. The walk around the reservoir was enjoyable on a decent path with wonderful views up to where we were going, however it was just a shame that as it was 7.5km away and 977m above us, it didn’t appear to get any closer.

We soon joined the glacier, which wasn’t dry for very long before we reached the snow line and geared up for the ascent. The ascent was very straightforward, but with no acclimatisation and a constant view of our destination it did turn into a bit of an endless plod. The only saving grace was that the views behind us just kept getting better and better.

When we arrived at the Oberaarjoch we were a bit perplexed looking up at the Oberaarjochhütte, there didn’t appear to be an obvious path leading from the col, and it looked like very unlikely ground up to the hut. However on closer inspection we saw some ropes, wood holding the rocks up and some ladders. We set off up the ascent and made our way up the unlikely ground to the top of the ladder before the hut, where we had to walk through a covered terrace due to the rockfall risk! Who thought building a hut here was a good idea?!

We arrived to a warm welcome from the hut team, it was a quiet night in the hut with just us and another team of six. This meant that we had a room to ourselves which was wonderful, especially for our first night. The evening in the hut was very pleasant and we enjoyed a wonderful dinner of soup, fresh salad, vegetarian lasagne and dessert.

Oberaarjochhütte to Finsteraarhornhütte – 7.6km, 350hm (ascent), 550hm (descent)

The next day was always planned as a short day, as I expected we would all sleep badly on the first night at 3200m while completely unacclimatised. The day started with backtracking the ascent to the hut and then descending the Studergletscher and then the Galmigletscher. The descent was a nice start to the day, as the views were brilliant, both in the area around us and into the Vallais Alps.

Once we had finished the descent, we started the ascent back up the Fieschergletscher and towards the Finsteraarhornhütte. The ascent was undramatic up the well covered glacier, but it felt long in the late morning sun, however thankfully for most of the ascent there was a pleasant breeze which kept us cool.

Eventually we arrived at the base of the ascent up to the hut, where we changed the snowshoes for crampons for the last steep snow slope before the final rocky scramble. We then enjoyed a pleasant afternoon sitting on the sun terrace soaking in the wonderful views from the hut while enjoying a few beers and talking to the other group who were in the Oberaarjochhütte last night.

As we left the Oberaarjochhütte in the morning the weather had significantly deteriorated, with the next day not looking great and the final day looking awful. So we made the decision to shorten the tour and had to make a decision about what todo the next day due to the weather. The Finsteraarhornhütte had no phone signal, but I was able to use my Inreach to contact a friend to provide some detailed weather forecasts for the area. This enabled us to make the decision to abandon doing anything over 4000m as we would be too slow with the amount of snow given the forecast of rain from late morning. We decided to head for a much shorter objective of the Wyssnollen which would give us a good shot at being on the summit before the weather deteriorated.

The rooms in the hut were lovely and the hut staff were all really friendly and cooked us an excellent meal that evening of tomato soup, fresh salad, mushroom risotto and dessert before heading for an early bedtime.

Wyssnollen (3583m) – 6.9km, 870hm

We woke up early for our ascent up the Wyssnollen, in the hope that we would beat the weather and enjoy a good summit for my birthday. After managing to eat some food for breakfast we headed off on our ascent. We were very surprised by the heavy downpour as we were putting our crampons on for the descent to the glacier, however thankfully this was short lived and soon passed.

Once we were at the glacier we changed into our snowshoes and headed off in the direction of the peak. The ascent was technically very simple with very little terrain over 30 degrees and hardly any crevasse danger due to the snow cover. It had been warm and cloudy overnight, so the snow had not frozen but thankfully due to the snow shoes this wasn’t really an issue.

As we ascended the weather began to improve and we managed to time our summit perfectly to coincide with the clearest weather of the day, which gave us a wonderful view in every direction. It was great to look down onto the Konkordiaplatz, up to the Alteschhorn, up to the Jungfrau, the Grosses Grünhorn and across to the Finsteraarhorn.

Due to the weather forecast we didn’t stick around on the summit for too long, before starting our descent. Unfortunately by this point the snow was very wet and the snow shoes were struggling on the steeper sections, however we didn’t change to crampons as we thought they would be even worse in the wet snow.

Eventually we made it back down the the Fieschergletscher, just as it started to rain. Dave set a good pace across the glacier and we were back at the hut pretty quickly, where in contrast to yesterday we sat inside all afternoon, in a very quiet hut.

Finsteraarhornhütte to Fiescheralp – 19km, 532hm (ascent), 1340hm (descent)

We had planned to walk back out the same way we came in, but this was planned after multiple summits. As we had only done one due to the shortening of the tour. Therefore we decided to cause ourselves a logistical nightmare by heading out via Grünhornlücke to the Konkordiaplatz so that we could walk down the Grosser Aletschgletscher and out to Fiescheralp.

After descending from the hut in the morning we decided to keep our crampons on this morning, which turned out to be a perfectly fine decision for the altitude that we went to, it was only on the last few meters up to the col that was starting to become hard work.

We started our descent rapidly from the Grünhornlücke as there was a very cold wind in the col. The descent down to the Konkordiaplatz went very quickly, where we were presented by wonderful views up the Grosser Aletschfirn and Jungfraufern.

I have walked up the Grosser Alteschgeltscher before, but last time it was dry which resulted in us choosing a very poor route to avoid a lot of crevasses and almost missing dinner in the Konkordiahütte. This time was very different as there was snow coverage for the tricky part of the glacier, and we arrived behind a number of guided groups who were also heading down the glacier. This enabled us to have a great clue about the best route through the wet glacier, and even on the dry glacier lower down.

This resulted in us almost being able to walk in a straight line all the way down the Grosser Alteschgletscher until we had to make the turnoff to Fiescheralp. The last bit was very crevassed and broken up due to the change in direction of the glacier as it turned right, which resulted in some intimidating walking.

We were soon off the glacier and made the hot ascent up to the Märjalen-Stausee before making the long hot walk back to Fiescheralp for a well earned cold drink and the start of our logistical fun to get back to the cars. This involved taking the gondola down to Fiesch, two busses to take us over the Grimsel pass, before taking the self controlled Oberaarbahn (cable car) back to the car which we had left at Oberaar.

Despite the logistical challenges at the end it was a great way to end the tour and make it a journey through the Bernese Oberland and a really satisfying four days in the high alps.