Descending mountains is generally considered to be more dangerous than climbing them. If you trip forwards on a steep slope you will be falling away from the ground not onto it. Additionally we would be more tired and in this case the weather would be worse.  It would be fair to say that none of us were particularly looking forward to repeating the hellish route from the glacier to the ridge in reverse.

In the picture above we have just left the ice field beneath the summit. The town of Lukerbad can be seen to the right of Geoff. Our route continues down this ridge and to the right of the small unnamed peak. The peak in the distance on the right is the Rinderhorn (Been there, done that!)

Fortunately the sleet and rain eased off as we descended the ridge and had more or less stopped for our slide down the scree ridden route to the Glacier.

The descent was as slow and unpleasant as we imagined.  When we stopped to put our crampons on for the final time, Geoff lost his footing and nearly lost his ice axe and himself down a small bergschrund crevasse.  He ended up with a cut face as a memento.

To see the route roll your curser over the photo above.

The higher Glacier was still avalanching so we skipped across that area very swiftly and started to search for our bivvy site which we had never seen in day light before.  Here we hoped to find our sleeping bags still buried under rocks.