Day 3 with Krister (couldn't see a bloody thing)

Wednesday morning, and the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Still, two days out of three of blue skies was better than we'd hoped for. With a white-out and snow fall, this would be a different kind of challenge. We met Krister for the 9am lift, and he started by extracting a climbing harness from his pack, and handing it to me with a "you may as well carry this". We did a warm-up run cutting across from one of the pistes and dropping down something that given the conditions felt steep and scary. Next time around we side-stepped up a snow arrete to drop into the Gipfel Colouir, "an area classic". Even given the white-out, I could see Sarah's face taking on a slightly paler shade of pale, looking down the rock-strewn mouth of the narrow, steep chute. We'd looked up at this many times from below, and although probably an optical illusion, it looks as it defies the laws of physics in that it shouldn't be able to retain any snow, given its angle. From above, this feeling was amplified, although Krister said that it was good that the visibility was so poor, or we'd probably be worried. The first 20 metres or so is a matter of sliding or scrambling down exposed rocks, trying to get onto the first proper snow. The first few turns felt claustrophobic, almost as if the tips and tails of the skis were about to touch the sides at the same time. It then slowly widened to a width more comfortable, but still scary steep. We re-joined the Sonnenpiste, and then boot-packed up a near-by knoll dropping back into the main open bowl under the Gemsstock. Next run we exited the Sonnenpiste above the drop-in to the Felsental run and donned the skins. It was now blowing a hoolie. After a short, but very steep climb of about 30 mins, we reached the knife-edge rim of the bowl next door. We quickly roped up for a bit of a scramble along the ridge, and then dropped into the bowl proper. The snow here was weird - like sugar, and Krister wasn't happy with the situation. He armed his avalanche airbag, and wove an intricate path close to the rock band to mimimise the risk of a slide. As the angle eased, so did we, and we could open up a bit - at least as much as the limited visibility allowed. As we dropped altitude, we entered the cloud base, and we were hard pushed to see just about anything. We joined the Felsental valley from the left - we'd done this bit numerous times, but in this condition, it was a challenge. And so the final run of the day was upon us. Again we headed for the Gipfel area, but dropped in about half way up the arrete into a triangle-shaped hanging snow field. At its apex, in a rather improbable situation, we managed to scramble back into the Gipfel just where it widens, and followed it back down. We boot-packed up the knoll, but this time roped up for the scramble up left along the ridge to the summit proper. We were greeted by untouched powder at an improbable angle. At this altitude, the visibility was actually reasonable, but we could see the cloud below us like a lid choking off the whole valley. Sooner or later, this would be an issue, as we suspected that Krister wasn't really the type to catch the last gondola down from the middle just because a bit of cloud. The single piste reaching the valley floor was a 'joy' of iced up moguls and rocks which we essentially tackled blind-folded - we could not see from one marker pole to the next, and followed Krister's whistling. Three action-packed days had come to an end, and we celebrated with a beer at Der Alte Apothek (where these words are being committed to electrons).