At noon, the hard work paid off. We were on the summit. The view was unforgetable. Going down, we didn´t follow the ridge. We took advantage of deep snow on the slopes and were jumping down to the place where the normal way leaves „the Festigrad“.

Photo gallery from the DOM you can find here.

1st day - RANDA

If you want to climb Dom you have to start from a village of Randa. The only way to get to Randa is from Visp, which is a town on the main road from Sion to Brig in the Wallis region. From Visp you have to taky the road to the south. Furter on, in Stalden, turn to the right and you will enter the Valley of Mattertal. The road ends in Tasch, the last town before Zermatt, a well known moutain resort with beautiful Matternhorn above.
Randa is situated 2 kms before Tasch. The camp site is just behind the village by the road on the left hand side. If you need money the cash mashine is in Tasch.


2nd day - DOM HUTTE

We slept at the camp the first night, as we had done each year. ( Two years before we climbed Monte Rosa, the year before we temted Weisshorn. Ales had been to Matternhorn ). In the morning we left for the for the Dom hutte leaving our car at the camp. The Dom huttte is a SAC ( Swiss Alpine Club ) hut situated in the elevation of 2940 m. It was overcast and rainy. We had to walk more than 1500 vertical metters with all our equipment on the shoulders. It was not too easy. Some difficult parts were provided with ropes and chains. It took us five hours and a half to get there, the last part in the storm. Soaked wet, we decided to spend the night at the hut ( 28 CHF per person ).


3rd day - BASE CAMP AND ACCLIMATIZATION

The „base camp“ for people who want to make the climbing more real and „closer to nature“ is situated about twenty-five minutes up from the hut on a lateral moraine above the glacier. We intended to climb the mountain the next day. Thus, after lunch, we decided to acclimatize a little by walking up the iceberg to the place where the path leaves the ice and continues in the wall of Festijoch ( 3723 m. ), a ridge that we were to cross to get to the northern wall of Dom. Honza climbed up the Festijoch. The lower part is very steep. You have to usa the ropes fixed there looking out for falling rocks. We did´t go any further that day. In the evening, we got ready for the next day.


4th day - DOM

The alarm clock woke us up a little before 3 a. m. But it was raining to our disappointment. We though that we would have to wait one more day. But at half past five, climbers who had just left from the hut were passing by our tents. They said that the keeper of the hut had predicted a fine day for the climb. So we didn´t hesitate any longer and set out at 6 o´clock. We switched on our head lamps, put on our crampons and followed the iceberg path we had already known. As we were getting closer to the wall of festijoch the weather was really improving. By 7.45, when we got to the top of Festijoch, the sun was shining. We climbed down a few meters to the other side of the ridge. That is the place where you can choose which way to the summit you will take. You can take „the Festigrad“ which leads you dirrectly along the north-western ridge to the summit. We took a „normal way“:
Just bellow the Festijoch, we put on our crampons again and tied to our rope. We had to walk down to the bottom of the cirque bellow the white northern wall and up again to get to the other side of the wall. A real work began there. The weather was beautiful, only the snow was quite deep. We were able to follow the path made by people who climbed the mountain the day before. Thus the orientation was fortunately easy for us. It took us almost two hours to traverse the northern wall to the place where it joins with „the Festigrad“. The last two hundred and fifty vertical meters were tough ones. Wind with ice particles was biting our faces. We had to cut footholds with our axes because the snow was rather hard upon the ridge.
At noon, the hard work paid off. We were on the summit. The view was unforgetable. Going down, we didn´t follow the ridge. We took advantage of deep snow on the slopes and were jumping down to the place where the normal way leaves „the Festigrad“. People who were still on their way up were having trouble with deep snow that was already melting by that time. We climbed down the same way from that place enjoying hangover caused by thin air.
We spent the evening cooking, eating, healing sores, and having good time in the base-camp.

5th day - BACK TO RANDA

We woke up to see how lucky we were. It was raing again! We packed up our wet tents and set out down.


A FEW MORE WORDS

The climb is not technically a very difficult one. The only rocky part - the Festijoch- might be very dangerous if wet or icy. The orientation on the slopes of the northern wall must be very hard if foggy. Zdenek made it although he had been unexperienced. But I can´t promise that you will have as perfect conditions as we did. Only I can promise that Dom is a beautiful mountain.
Good luck and sorry if you have found any mistakes in the text.