Three people died on Matterhorn last week in two separate accidents. By chance, a mountain guide filmed one of the victims shortly before the man fell to his death.
The guide, Eukeni Soto, was shocked at seeing the rookie by himself at 4,200 meters on the Hornli Route. He climbed without an ice axe, proper crampons, or basic safety gear. Check it here:
We contacted Soto for details of the incident and for his insight about climbing the Matterhorn.
“The Matterhorn is no joke,” Soto, an IFMGA guide from the Basque Country, told ExplorersWeb. “We have had too many accidents this season already.”
Clinging to ropes
The accident occurred last Friday, Aug. 16, at around 4,200m. Soto and his client had summited and had started their descent 30 minutes earlier.
“As usual on the Hornli Route, I was downclimbing and guiding my client at a speedy pace, but I couldn’t help stopping in my tracks for a moment and film the climber with my cell phone,” said Soto.
He hoped to share the clip later as a cautionary tale of how not to climb the Matterhorn.
They were at the end of a section equipped with thick, hawser-like fixed ropes. Beyond, the fixed rope ended, and just 100 vertical meters, covered in snow, remained before the summit. The climber was hoisting himself up on a rope with its end buried in snow.
“For some meters, this person had to cling to the climbing rope of another guide, who was leading a client on their descent, until he reached the following rope,” Soto recalls. “Shortly afterward, the ropes ended on the snow-covered sections. It was crazy that this person was up there with no equipment, no ice axe, and no proper crampons.”
The bad news
Soto and his client passed the irresponsible climber and returned safely to Zermatt. He posted a clip of the video he had recorded on Instagram, noting: “It is unbelievable that this guy got so far up, with no equipment and no knowledge.”
Later on, he learned the bad news that the rogue climber reached the summit, but soon after, on his way down, he slipped and fell to his death.
“He was the third solo climber who died on the mountain last week,” Soto said. “As with any other accident, it is tragic.”
He didn’t want to feed curiosity about morbid details but wanted to warn potential climbers unfamiliar with Matterhorn about the dangers of taking it too lightly. It is a famous mountain, and dozens climb it every day in summer, but for most of the way, a slip is fatal.
Soto and his client also found an ice axe in the snow and brought it back to the hut. “It probably belonged to the two climbers who had fallen to their deaths the day before,” he said.
Most climbs are guided
The normal route up the Swiss side of the Matterhorn — the Hornli Ridge – involves 1,220 vertical meters of easy but exposed scrambling and climbing. Climbers leave the Hornli Hut at around 4 am in the dark, to summit and get down before the typical afternoon clouds cover the mountain.
The climb requires mountaineering boots and, on the upper section, crampons. You also need an ice axe and to know how to use it. As usual in the mountains, the descent is more dangerous than the ascent.
Because of the large number of climbers on the peak every summer, local guides have installed a series of thick ropes and fixed anchors. Clients are short-roped, and guides waste no time with classical climbing techniques. (Check the video below.)
Such an endeavor requires speed, the endurance to scramble up ropes for hours, a steady mind to bear the spooky exposure, and a background in alpine climbing.
Most Matterhorn wannabes these days use guides. (Guides operate in a 1:1 ratio.) There are independent teams too, but they are usually slower than the guided pairs. This often leads to tense situations, with guided pairs passing them up and down, which can create safety issues for both teams.
It is unlike Mont Blanc, where there are no fixed ropes, and the snow route offers enough room to pass safely. Matterhorn guides are fast, and to avoid traffic jams, their clients need to be able to keep up or turn around.
Don’t miss the way
Soto said that conditions on the mountain were okay that day. “The weather was good, and there was almost no ice on the upper sections,” he said. “But of course, mistakes are not an option.”
Soto explains that the rock is “acceptable” as long as the climbers stay right on track.
“You must know the route exactly, meter by meter, because the moment you deviate, the rock is totally rotten,” he warns.
2024 has been a relatively good year, thanks to the amount of snow that has remained on the upper part.
“The problem comes when the upper parts get dry, and the unstable rock underneath is exposed,” says Soto. “Then there is a lot of rockfall.”
In the hot, dry summers of 2023 and especially 2022, frequent large rockfalls forced local authorities to close the Matterhorn to climbers.
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