Tracuit hutte, Switzerland

 The highlight of the trip had started, we got up relatively early for a valley day, and drove around to Zinal ...  this involved going back down to the Rhone valley West to the next valley (excusing the Turtmann niche) and up the Zinal valley as far as the road goes. At the village there is a big car park on the river meadows, where the cars from everyone in the area leaves their cars.




From here the track goes up the East side of the valley, initially across the pastures and lower farm lands but soon crosses into the upper meadows, and continues to ascend in the full glare of the sun.
The hut is a long trek, with many meters gained, but we were well acclimatised and ready for the effort required. Our packs were honed to the bare essentials that we thought would be required so we were not carrying excess weight.


After several hours the meadows gave way to scrub and then to scree and loose stones. We could finally see the hut on the skyline - still a long way off, but something to aim for.








Finally arriving at the hut everything we were wearing needed to be dried off from the excessive sweat that had drained from us on the ascent. I even remember sticking my whole head into the drinking trough outside the hut.







The Bishorn was just across the glacier from the hut, which stood where the glacier fell into the valley we had just come up from. This would be on route to the Weisshorn, and we could easily see the well trodden track for the morning.







There was some cloud around in the evening, but we hoped it would not impact the re-freeze over night and that everything would be in excellent conditions for tomorrow.