2024 PDG: Patrollers Don’t Go

Three skiers walked into a bar in Zermatt, Switzerland, at 10pm a few Mondays ago. Far from the first of their kind, they joined a house packed with skinny men and women wearing La Sportiva or Ski Trab t-shirts and long faces at the Brown Cow Pub on this particular evening. They found a table in the corner, ordered a beer and a shot of schnapps each, and clinked glasses to what could have been…I was one of these three. 

Every five minutes or so another group of three would walk into the bar with solemn looks and Dynafit outwear giving them away. We were the first wave of this year’s Patrouille Des Glaciers, teams of 3, and we were just informed the race was canceled. 

After nine months of scheming, more than a quarter million vertical feel in skimo boots this season, three planes, three countries, and countless afternoons of shuffling up bad snow alone, this bucket list item stays in the bucket.

Mountain weather is fickle. We all know that. The Swiss military, who puts on the race, knows that. They spend the weeks leading up to the race wanding the route, fixing lines on booters, and conducting avalanche control. But they still can’t control the weather. Five people died of exposure, caught in a storm while training on the PDG course a month ago. Two hundred thirty people have been caught in 164 avalanches in the Swiss Alps this season; 17 did not make it. Folks here are understandably conservative. On the eve of the race, the organizers found themselves looking at high winds and new snow arriving on high passes just ahead of when all us speed weenies would show up in lycra and carbon fiber. They pulled the plug. 

The PDG runs every other April, from Zermatt to Verbier. It’s an epic 35-mile course with 15,000ft of elevation gain. A short course also joins the field in Arolla. The several thousand racers participating are broken into two start dates three days apart. We were slated to start Z1, meaning Tuesday night. The Friday night Z2 start was still on, so some still raced the PDG in 2024. Unfortunately, with 2500 racers already in each bracket, they do not let anyone switch dates, so we Z1 racers were out of luck. Some years, they have postponed the race, but this year, the forecast for Wednesday night looked a little better (though, by my estimation, Thursday night could, perhaps, have worked, but this is Switzerland, and I am not sure they have a form for that). But, as illustrated below in the IG post, the weather came in like precise Swiss Timing.