To celebrate the end of the PDG, the Patrouille Suisse (the swiss equivalent of the Red Arrows) do a spectacular display over Verbier

The final day of the Patrouille des Glaciers and you’ll delighted to hear that the record of yomping across mountains in the dead of night from Zermatt to Verbier has been beaten – they can get here in under 6 hours now. I’m told about 5 hours and 50 minutes, which slashes 25 odd minutes off the previous record.

What is the PDG? Well it’s a ski touring race from Zermatt to here where competitors enter in teams of three, and set of at midnight. It’s incredibly hard. And possibly suicidal.

It’s only every two years means that in a PDG year at the start of the season everybody who does a bit of touring starts having whispered conversations in the Pub Mont Fort about having a stab. Most of us promptly decide it’s too much hassle. After all, it’s like two marathons in one night. On snow. And across some pretty scary mountains.

It’s also a pretty impressive logistical exercise for the Swiss Army (and due to Swiss national service a huge number of them descend on resort and seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in the pubs).

But the Army marshal the whole thing and manage to dodge crevasses, avalanche-prone-slopes and cliffs and still get every single competitor and spectator safely off the hill. And yes, people do hike up to watch the racers coming through the cols in the wee small hours of the morning.

But the biggest thing is that it seems to somehow articulate a Valaisanne (and Swiss) sense of pride – a way to assert their Valais-ness…

(Thanks to G for the photo which I might have pinched off his facebook page…)

Well, it’s the end of the season and we decided to have a night out – unfortunately Nicol’s over in Zermatt getting punished by Swiss Snowsports trainers, but we managed to get everyone else together before they disappeared off for the summer.

On the way we tried to consume our body-weights in the Pub’s mini-burgers, got some very colourful but mostly disgusting shots from Marc and found that Westy and Bruce use the same tailor.

We also discovered that the cocktails in Coup d’état are quite pokey. And that you’re not actually allowed to leave the Pub early if Toby’s standing next to the bar.

Finally, we confirmed that it’s always the old men who stay out latest, with Toby, Kent, Westy and myself propping up the bar and mocking Colin’s bump in his brand new Subaru into the wee small hours.

And it looked like this…

Every year maniacs from all over the world come to hurl themselves down Mont Fort in the hope they can go faster than any of the other maniacs… And they stay up into the wee small hours servicing the skis. Like this chap:

Yup, a royal cock up in MET-office-land, so we got no snow but blue skies instead. And we can’t really complain – even the M25 was amazing… (Oh and did we mention it was empty EVERYWHERE?):

So we should be running around town acquiring the rest of our equipment for the start of the torture tomorrow, but Caroline is de-heading her plants, Clare and Rich are en route and I am writing this..! Not to worry, we have just found out that there has been a cancellation in Prafleuri hut so the first day isn’t going to be a suicidal dash for the Dix hut…

So below is the route we are taking (well almost) 56km distance and over 8km of vertical ascent and decent. EASY. The wonders of technology doesn’t reach to the Haute Route so I will attempt to text Guy updates of our progress..!

Wish us luck.