Well the news was not good as the Hut Guardian broke the news at Dinner. Needless to say he couldn't keep a straight face. [The underpants had been washed and hung out to dry but not out of reach of said donkey.]
Peter Little and I had discovered a gem of a Mountain Hut the Crete Seche http://www.rifugiocreteseche.com/ which has some spectacular very long rock climbs on very good grannit. We climbed the classic Brontolo-Bakalov which leads to the summit of Punta Charrey.
For the second half of the week we switched our attention to snow and big secluded 4000er's. We choose to target the Dirruhorn. We drove over to St Nicolas near Zermatt and walked to up the beautiful Bordier Hutte in about 4 hours.
Breakfast the next morning was at the grim time of 2.30am. Peter and I headed off up the moraine eventually reaching the glacier in about an hour. We then headed up the left side of the glacier avoiding some very big holes. After about three hours we arrived at the couloir which leads up to the Dirrujoch. This was steep and unfortuanetly the sun was now beaming down on us and loosening rocks which started coming down the couloir. We tried climbing the rocks at the side , but this was very slow. Being slow is not a luxury you can afford while alpine climbing and mindful that the glacier would be a soggy nightmare if we were too late, we reluctantly decided to retreat. A shame not to make the summit but still a wonderful wild place and we vowed to return.
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