Riederfurka to Konkordia Hut
Leaving the Villa Cassel at dawn, the expedition will cross the Arve and Larch forest on the southern flank of the Aletsch glacier.
They will take their first steps onto the glacier below the Eggishorn. “Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland 1838” warned tourists to follow their guides in crossing glaciers: “In dangerous situations the guide advances a-head, with cautious step, sounding with his pole beforehand as in a sea beset with shoals”.
A pioneering English-led effort to photograph the glacier in 1865 required the services of a teenage boy whose job it was to carry the camera tripod and to fetch the water needed for the photographic plates once they were exposed.
As Les Swindin recommends in the Alpine Club’s current guide to the Bernese Oberland, the party will “climb the glacier close to its central moraine and then before it makes a final rise to the Konkordiaplatz, [will] move over to the east side and follow the lateral moraine to the rocks upon which the [Konkordia] hut stands”.
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