Our hiking/mountain climbing trip to Le Luisin (2786 m)

So, you always hear about tourists who try to climb the steepest mountains wearing flip flops and T-Shirts. You always talk about how you would never something that stupid yourself. Well, yesterday we kinda did something similar, it all went OK in the end but to tell you the whole story I'll start from the beginning.

So the plan was to take the train from Geneva at 8 a.m. to Les Mercottes, take a gondola half way up to the Le Luisin mountain and walk to the top from there. The first sign of things to come was the weather. This is the view we had from the window of the gondola. 

So, we could see like 10 metres in front of us. We figured it would clear up as it was still pretty early in the morning. We took the gondola to Le Creusaz, 1777 m elevation, so that's where our hike officially started.

When we started walking up the mountain it seemed as it was going to be a fun hike. 3/4 of us didn't have hiking shoes but we had running shoes and we were dressed warmly enough and had lots of food and water. So the track was not too steep in the beginning, slightly narrow at points. The first more difficult part was a rock wall a few metres high that had chains on it. It was manageable though and we figured it was just this one part of the track that was difficult, because the rest had been ok. Here are some pictures of the track and us.

The track, not too bad, the fog disappeared for a part of the trip

It was a very pretty track all in all, slightly difficult to see in the fog

Still happy

We could see the mountains next to us for a while

Narrow track and the looming nothingness to the left of it

Signs of trouble, it was beginning to look like we needed more equipment

So as you can see at the last picture, the track started getting steeper and steeper. It was still doable for us, the young and the fit :). The parts with chains started appearing more often and more than not it was climbing rather than hiking. So, just after the last picture we had been hiking for 2h40minutes and we decided it was time for a lunch break. We stopped at the beginning of what looked like a pretty steep climb next to us and we noticed these two plaques next to us.

Scary

Yep, that's a wall of rock all right

So yeah, two people had died here, we came to the conclusion later that it was supposed to be a warning. So as we were eating the weather got worse, first it started raining and then it started hailing. Three of us were huddled under one umbrella to try to wait it out, we also noticed a small stream started forming over the rock wall we were supposed to climb. 

Us, under one little umbrella. Notice the direction of the arrow pointing our way, right up

So, we knew we were close to the top time wise, but we couldn't be sure. The options were to either turn back or try to make it to the top where we were supposed to come down on a path that was supposedly much easier and not as steep. So we decided to give it a go, which in hindsight wasn't the best idea but at the time seemed reasonable because we definitely weren't ready to give up. 

So, up we went. The first thing I noticed was that the rocks we're quite slippery, and when you held on to them in a wrong way a stream of water went up your sleeve. It was also getting colder and colder and the chain we were supposed to hold on to was getting so cold that your hands cramped up and it was painful to hold on to it. And then, literally a wall, 3 metres high, with little iron bars sticking out from it, a little ladder in the rock. We were already 5 metres high up, and that ladder was slippery. So, since I went first I suggested to climb the ladder and see if it got any better at the top. Well, it definitely did not get any better. And let me tell you, sticking to an icy chain on a rock wall 5 metres up the air really drives home how much you don't want to die on a mountain in Switzerland. So, we did the only thing we could, we turned back. The climb down that steep wall took about 20 minutes, just about 5 metres down. It was still raining and my hands were really not cooperating, at this point adrenaline started kicking in so I wasn't really scared anymore at least. So when we made it down that rock wall, we were so happy. The way back seemed like a 10 times better option now since we knew we could do it and we didn't actually have to do mountain climbing. This is a picture some way down, notice the grin.

We survived, yay!

We made it back in one piece as you can understand. We got pretty close to the top as we found out afterwards, but we wouldn't have made it without professional equipment. This is a picture of the top, notice the good weather and proper equipment.

What the top looks like

We had RunKeeper recording our whole trip so we could plot it in Google Earth afterwards, this is how it looked like.

Us, 160 m from the top

The last, steep part

So all in all this is how far we made it. As you can see from the side view picture the last part was steep and the part we made it to is still pretty impressive, 160 m from the top and 

about 2600 m elevation. So we're pretty happy with the whole trip. As you know, bad decisions make good stories and this is definitely one of those times. I think next week, we'll google the top before actually going there :D.