We were only six hours into what was meant to be an easy five-day tour when we saved a man’s life. By ‘we’, I don’t mean ‘me’. Nor do I mean Peter, my partner in both life and on this climb.
By ‘we’, I mean Will.
Peter and I are alpine amateurs; our friend Will, conversely, is a mountain maestro. In exchange for a donation to his cat-rescue charity, he was guiding us on the ‘Spaghetti Tour’, a classic route through the Monte Rosa Massif—a collection of connected peaks spilling between Italy and Switzerland that culminates in the Dufourspitze, which at 4,634m is Western Europe’s second-highest peak. The route takes in many of the massif’s 4,000+m peaks, and is done—usually—over five days, with you staying at high-altitude mountain huts on the Italian side; the final hut, Margherita Hut, clings improbably to the very summit of the 4,554m Signalkuppe. From there you descend the Grenz Glacier towards Zermatt, Switzerland.
A friend who had done it several years ago made it sound like a picturesque stroll across the top of the Alps, with easy summits giving panoramic views of soaring mountains. But a heatwave meant conditions were different in 2022. As the permafrost melted, there was increased rockfall; as glaciers deteriorated, more crevasses appeared. And due to the lack of snowfall the previous winter, not only were conditions steeper and icier than usual, the glaciers were left with little protection from the heat of the summer to come, which, as it turned out, would be the hottest on record. Prior to 2022, the Swiss Academy of Sciences defined an annual loss of Switzerland’s glacial-ice volume of two per cent
