Towering above the high alpine villages of Switzerland, Italy and France, the lofty peaks of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains have long been a Mecca for mountaineers and explorers alike. But, whilst cable cars and a mountain-railway usher hordes of eager-minded tourists to the region’s more accessible heights, pioneering exploration is still continuing, just not quite where one expects. Far out of sight, down in the eerie blue darkness of Western Europe’s second largest glacier system, are ice caves as yet unmapped and unseen by any explorer. It was into these hidden depths that our expedition was venturing.
Towards the end of October 2012, an eight-person strong British team, partly funded by Welsh Sports Association and led by Martin Groves and Gareth Davies, returned to the Gorner Glacier for their second expedition exploring, mapping and photographing the harsh but beautiful sub-glacial world of moulins. For those not in the know, these huge shafts are formed when meltwater up on the glacier weakens the ice around it and suddenly flushes downwards to unseen depths from the bottom of a surface lake or down a crevasse. It was decided that our expedition should take place slightly later than during the previous year, in the hope that the meltwater would be less, and the going significantly easier as a result. In reality, extremely harsh weather conditions made progress difficult, as the team lugubriously battled with strong blizzards and temperatures of -18 °C. Countless hours were spent advancing through the deep snow, only for all that hard work to be completely erased again at a moment’s notice.
But that was all yet to come. Starting at the far most eastern side of the bustling tourist town of Zermatt, two big glaciers fall steeply into the deep at either side of the iconic Monte-Rosa Mountain; at the left of the group lays the Findelen Glacier, on its right the Gorner Glacier. Between these two glaciers, a long extended mountain ridge rises up to the Stockhorn, before then completely disappearing under the glacial ice further up. This ridge is called Gornergrat and the legendary railway that conquers this mountain from Zermatt is called Gornergratbahn. This was to serve as our primary means of transport up to somewhere moderately close to the Gorner Glacier. The rest of the way in would unfortunately have to be on foot.