Saas Fee - Climbing the Lagginhorn

Ken Baldry's walks around Saas Fee

Alpine Option - The Lagginhorn 4010m

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Saas-Fee on the
'Round Monte Rosa walk'

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This climb is a two-day operation, which starts with the walk up to the Weissmies Hut, well sign-posted from the village. If you are staying in Saas Fee, you need to walk down to Saas Grund, where the path starts. I was staying in Saas Almagell, so had to walk down the road for a mile to Grund. The path is well marked in the town & winds pleasantly up into a hanging valley, the Triftalp, where you can soon see the hut, looking much closer than it is! I understand that the string railway has been restored to the Triftalp for the lazy. The walk up is always good training, so you should do it.

The Saas Grund Triftalp cow village on the way up.

The Lagginhorn (route marked)
& Weissmies Hut circled from Triftalp

Next morning...this is my diary entry from 1st September 1977

Up by Wirt power at 0350! to climb the Lagginhorn 4010 metres. We expected extra snow problems because of the precipitation of the last few days and, as a result, found a rather more pleasant route across the glacier below the peak itself.

The early Sun on the Mischabel from the Laggin Glacier

The forshortened Lagginhorn from the Glacier

Then up a snow slope to a nice rock ridge, rather like Halls Fell Top (on Blencathra in the Lake District) in winter. This ends at a little Col and, according to the guide book, is followed by a steeper (50°) NW rock ridge to the summit. This is supposed to be entirely rock, but was to all intents and purposes, entirely steep snow, some of it over ice in an unstable relationship. It took more than two hours to climb 400 metres.

We took seven hours to climb the 4.5 hour route and the faster Swiss party took six. The lads, who had started out with us and were crag rats, had gone ahead on the Halls Fell stuff but we caught them up at the summit. They had soloed the bugger but I told them to rope up for the descent, which they did. They went off down like the ton of bricks, looking like an accident waiting to happen. We climbed the rapidly deteriorating snow slope in pitches, thus losing half an hour or so but at least we did it safely. By the time we got to the glacier, the snow was revolting. It shrank Jane’s socks and her legs were sunburnt while my face did, too. After the summit, there was a lot of hazy sun, which did the damage. No views to speak of. We had started moving at 5 and got back to the hut at 1550! Despite this, we were in reasonable nick while the lads, half an hour quicker, were thoroughly knackered. At 1300 metres from hut to summit, it was the most arduous day in the fells so far.

The view across to the lower 2nd summit