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We met up at Zurich airport - Chris, John and me. John and I were an hour and a half late thanks to Easyjet, so we'd missed our connecting train that would have got us the last bus to the Grimsel pass. Chris had travelled BA from Machester, and was waiting for us.
Chris and I were by now well-established Alpine partners (see previous years' reports). John, from Kendal, was a long-time climbing friend of Chris. This was his first trip to the Alps, and he was looking forward to using his brand new crampons - complete with mean-looking serrated teeth.
The three of us had got together a few weeks earlier for a training weekend in Snowdonia, where John had been nursing a sprained ankle, and I'd ended up in A&E at Bangor hospital with a badly damaged finger. John's ankle was still tender, and I had a black leather finger stall to protect my still swollen and inflexible ring finger. Chris was in his usual superfit state of robust health, but John and I agreed he could tag along if he carried the rope.
Our plan was to try again to complete the route that Chris, Agnès and I had wanted to do last year - a traverse of the Berner Oberland starting at the Grimsel pass and ending in Lauterbrunnen. On the way we planned to climb the Finsteraarhorn, Fiescherhorn, Jungfrau, Mönch, and possibly the Eiger. The story of that trip is in last year's report.
So off we set for Meiringen, the Grimsel pass, and the Berghaus Oberaar. Explore the diary to see how we got on, travel tips for information on each end of our journey, and huts for, well, the huts.
You can find some of the pictures in larger format in the photo gallery.
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Design, text and graphics by Tony Turton. Copyright © 2002 Tony Turton
First published 7 September 2002. Redesign and minor modification 20 January 2004.