UKC

Me and my best friend have made a pact: we're going to climb the Matterhorn.

Neither of us are hugely experienced climbers - he's done a fair bit of sport climbing around South-East Asia, while I've done a little bit of sport climbing and bouldering on crags in Derbyshire and Cornwall, and a decent amount of indoor bouldering in gyms in London. Neither of us have done any winter mountaineering. So this is definitely a long-term goal we want to work up to over the next few years.

We've been looking at winter mountaineering courses in the Cairngorms, the Tatras or the Alps, but it's not really clear to me how we would choose one over the other.

So I guess my questions are:

Just how big a task have we set ourselves?

How much time/experience would it take for two novice mountaineers to get to the level required to climb the Matterhorn?

How would you suggest we train and prepare for something like this?

Thanks!

In reply to luckywood:

Why winter?

I'd start thinking about a summer attempt, and the best training for that would be to get in some summer Alpine experience. Maybe a BMC Summer Alpine training course to start with?

In reply to luckywood:

Once that's sorted, start thinking about a time when the weather is stable but Europe isn't on holiday because, by all accounts, the queues at peak times are something else.

In reply to luckywood:

Nothing on the Hornli Ridge is above VDiff, so it's technically easy, but it's a long route with lots of scrambling. There's various Alpine courses, or go to a quietish Alpine area and get used to the moving together/starting in the dark/descending scrambling ground/long day stuff. Early season in the Ecrins? Gran Paradiso? Valpelline?
Climb a big easy peak (Allalinhorn? Gran Paradiso?) to get some idea of how you get on with altitude.
Have some good long scrambling days in Britain - linking stuff around Ogwen gets you a lot of footage, or a trip to the Cuillin would be even better.
Do some I/II winter routes here too, up (and importantly, down) - the top snow/ice field on the Hornli isn't steep but it is steady and a fall wouldn't be good.
And have fun doing the learning, of course.

In reply to luckywood:

Climbing the Matterhorn by the Hornli ridge is not technically difficult but you need to be fit, acclimatised and skilled at moving efficiently over exposed scrambling terrain for many hours. You will of course need the requisite rope-skills as well.

You could start your preparations by regularly hill-walking, scrambling and climbing in the UK in all seasons, assuming you are both resident here. This should develop most of the skills required. This can be topped up with a 'course' in alpine skills from either experienced friends (Why not join a club?) or a BMC Jonathon Conville-type course.

How long will it take to reach the required level? This is difficult to say but experienced friends/instructors who have been out a few times with you will be better able to answer this.

I wish you well and remember, it looks much harder than it is.

You may find some of the advice on the link below useful.
http://cosleyhouston.com/alps-training.htm

In reply to luckywood:
As others have said the technical stuff isn't the issue. Lots of good climbers brought up as rock climbers find they can't really hack it (not a technical term) on quite easy routes in the Alps. The essentials include:
1. Considerable physical endurance, because they are often long days and tiredness leads to carelessness and accidents (like minor slips) which would probably be trivial in, say, the Lakes, but anything up to lethal in the Alps.
2. A steady head on you. I've always thought the main problem with the Alps is that they're steadily falling down, so loose rock and poor rock are a given. This can make quite easy climbing rather serious and whether this worries you a little or a lot (and it should probably worry you a bit) will have a lot to do with whether you take to Alpinism even of a low grade. Even easy routes can be too stressful for some people to enjoy.
3. Patience can be useful too on honeypot routes like the Hornli Ridge. You have to expect crowds and other people there to be inexperienced (being guided), slow, clumsy and likely to knock rocks down on those below.

Before doing something like the Hornli Ridge you really need to get some experience on more trivial routes, where you'll find whether 2 above is likely to be a problem for you. If you just want to do the Matterhorn in isolation and then get back to sport climbing, I'd hire a guide.

In reply to luckywood:

British climbing can prepare you technically for the Alps but nothing can prepare you mentally for the sheer gob-smacking massiveness and exposure. As somebody wrote above, the nearest we have in terms of the sustained effort required is probably the Cullin ridge.

In reply to luckywood:

I agree the technical level is not great but this is a long day, starting in the dark, and you need to be very fit and capable of moving together for many hours. There is a lot of loose rock. When I did it (summer) although there wasn't a lot of snow, the final pitches which are very steep, were heavily glazed with ice- not bad going up but very exposed on descent. It is a serious route- there are a lot of people in Zermatt churchyard who fell and died on it. That being said I had a great day and the weather (another feature) was perfect. A guide as someone suggested is a good idea if you can afford it! And a great thing to do is a helicopter ride around the summit.

In reply to luckywood:
There have been quite a few threads on this subject over the years, a search might be worth doing.

In the Alps good mountain judgement is essential and that only comes with experience.