Day Twelve: Preparing for The Mönch

Cory: The beginning of our journey inside our journey: Got up today and headed up to Rita's house to eat breakfast and get our bags checked. We had to make sure we had everything we would need for the next two days to keep ourselves warm and comfortable. After making sure we were all set we set off for the Grindelwald train station that would take us up to the Jungfraujoch, from where we would set off. The train ride took around an hour and was an incredible feat of engineering. The track went through multiple mountains including the Eiger and Mönch and the tunnels had been built in the late 1800's, by about 300 men, before they had mechanical drills. Since the winters are so harsh and the Alps get so dangerous, while digging the tunnel they had to stay up in the mountains all winter. In the fall they had to bring up a bunch of live animals and other food that could get them through the winter. 

After arriving at the top we took a lunch break in one of the few restaurants they had. Since this was a prime tourist location not only were the train tickets outrageously expensive but so was the food. Most of the train station is under the mountain. There is only one visible part on top which is called the spinx and it literally looked like an evil lair.

 Once we were all full we set off for the hut that we would be spending the night in. Getting to the hut wasn't challenging as the way we took was actually just a path, however the snow we were walking on was quite soft and most of it was uphill so we were all pretty tired. The hut we were staying in was called the Mönchsjochhutte and sat at an altitude of 11,976 feet.

 We got our room which was full of bunk beds and headed back outside to practice using the crampons, picks, and being tied together on rope. The view from the hut was amazing.

After we got comfortable with all of this we went back inside and enjoyed a filling three course meal. We then played uno for a while and eventually headed to bed. We had been warned before we went to sleep that we probably wouldn't actually sleep much due to the altitude. I was thinking that since I was really tired I would probably get an alright amount of sleep but I was quite wrong. The night crept along slowly for all of us as it was very hard to fall asleep and unfortunately whenever I would manage to fall asleep I would be rudely awakened by a pillow thrown by Elliott because I was snoring. He probably should've just let me sleep since he wasn't going to anyways. 

The next day we would climb the Mönch.