Compromised Summit Attempt Turned into a Hike

Together with my maths teacher/rope climbing companion, we decided to attempt an ascent of the Allalinhorn (4027m) in the Saas-Grund region. We set off early on Sunday morning, arriving at the Saas-Fee lift station before 10am. But we were held up at Martigny station due to an assault on train staff, which meant we missed our connection to Visp/Viège and arrived half an hour later at the foot of the lifts. Unfortunately, when we arrived, we found that the alpine metro that was still taking us up to 3500m was closed due to the amount of snow that had fallen during the night, so we kept hoping that it would open, but this was only the case for pedestrians on their way to the panoramic restaurant. But as we didn't have enough time to make a trail and attempt the summit from Saas-Fee in one day, we decided to cancel the ascent and take a half-day lift pass.

Getting used to the snow on the slopes was quite difficult at first, as it had snowed a lot and the snow was heavy; the slope was full of big bumps and quite hard to ski, but I got used to the conditions relatively quickly. After doing the whole descent and climbing back up with a skip, we found ourselves plunged into a very dense fog that gave us extremely poor visibility (1-2m max). We did this run a bit blindly, trying not to get caught out by the big bumps; the descent was not at all pleasant. We then took a chairlift to get out of the fog, then crossbows to get away from it. We finally arrived at the limit of the open facilities, and instead of going back down to the piste we decided to put on the skins and hike under the facilities and on the undamaged pistes to avoid going into crevasse-prone areas, of which there are many in this region.

So I did my first conversions (zigzagging on steep slopes) with my skis, which I'd never used for touring before, and it went pretty well, I soon felt like I had the hang of it, but a little fall on my bottom halfway up brought me back to reality. And after about 300m of ascent, we settled down and had a break; I didn't really feel the effect of the altitude at 3500m, which is really good, but I realized that I still need to improve my endurance, especially my thighs, which heat up really quickly.

We then descended in knee-deep powder, and my skis with good lift enabled me to keep up the speed despite a fairly shallow slope. I honestly think it was the best descent of my life, with exceptional snow and bright sunshine.
Despite the fact that there was no summit in sight, it was a really great day that also allowed me to practice conversions and skiing in big snow.