Steinplatte climbing with Georg

The day after climbing Hochferner, there was a change of weather that meant it wouldn't be good to climb ice faces. So we diverted to rock climbing in the north back near home. Georg found a route called "Iron Mouse" (UIAA VII+), which should provide 8 pitches of fun. That grade is way beyond me as a leader, but I was game to follow anything. Let's go!




We paid 8 euros to drive the toll road to a high parking lot, then walked for 30 minutes to the base of the routes, below an imposing vertical escarpment. We were in the "Iron Mouse" sector, but weren't positive as to where the route began. Finally we decided on something and went up. We left a sweater at the base, thinking that it would be a hot day, and we kept one for the belayer.

Pretty soon, Georg was on the lead of the first pitch, shivering hard! The wind was very strong. He had dispatched the first step easily (we thought that was supposed to be VII+, it was more like VI), then took some time making the last move to the anchor. As I came up I understood why. Good climbing led to near the end, then some tough moves left me "stranded" just to the side of the anchor. I tried to move left on small holds, and finally gave up, swinging onto the rope, then climbing more easily the last 2 meters. Very puzzling! That was supposed to be grade VI, but it was at least VII...

With these uncertain thoughts, I surrendered the sweater to Georg who really needed it. Then I climbed up a pocketed face that was really nice. I made kind of a mess of it though, feeling uncertain and intimidated by the overall grade of the climb. As much as possible I rested on the rope, swung here and there, looking around the corner, etc. I do remember one hard move that required some courage on my part, if only because I did it unwillingly! Eventually I exited into a shrub and shared an anchor with a party from Rosenheim.

Georg took us over a little shrubby peak to the base of pitch 3: a corner followed by a great grey slab. His only comment was "...ugh...slabs" which I understood! But he dispatched it really well. The crux seemed to be a spot where you are crouched on one leg, and just have to stand up on it with nothing for hands or the other foot. Shiver!

I combined the next two pitches of grade IV and V terrain. This was fun, confidence-building climbing for me. The cracks on this pitch just invited gear, and I played along. The bolts were oddly placed. In one sense, they weren't necessary as there was plenty of good natural protection available. And there were only two of them on a 25 meter section of climbing. Why bother, I wondered?



The next pitch was grade VI, but wow, it had some tough moves! The first move was already interesting: lieback a flack with your feet as high as possible. Get into a committing "Frankenstein" position, and if you are the right height, will find a Thank God hold at the very limit of your right arm! That is kind of mean before the first clip! Later, I had to rest at a puzzling lieback move at the end of the difficulties. Sigh!

Continuing an unfortunate theme, I begged off the lead of the VI+ pitch to come. Although the vertical wall was intimidating, I just had to look at my performance and confidence and declare myself wanting. If I couldn't even follow the grade VI pitch below for 25 meters, how would I lead a VI+ 40 meter pitch at a dead-vertical angle, especially as these routes really seem to need supplemental gear along with their handful of bolts. Disappointing, but eventually success is built on disappointment, so...

Georg headed up. Making the first clip was easy. The second...not too hard. But the third clip was a long ways up and required some hard climbing! Same with the fourth. Whew. Good lead. Above these difficulties the pitch became a real delight, with huge pockets for eager hands and feet. It really was an amazing pitch, I had to agree.


Georg on the amazing hard pitch

Michael following


I headed up for the last pitch, still feeling indimidated. A strange rightward traverse was puzzling, but easy enough. Higher, it was very interesting climbing up the right edge of a face to avoid an overhang. There were good grips for hands, and slabby feet as I went around the corner in strong wind, eventually finding the anchor.

Done and done! Amazing that the day before we were tip-toeing up a glacier in crampons, and today we were sport climbers. Oddly enough, we were "colder" today than on the glacier!

We started abseiling, first making an impressive vertical 60 meter rappel, then a 50 meter rappel, then a shorter one to reach scrambling terrain at about the level of the base of pitch 3. Georg learned from another climber that we weren't on Iron Mouse for that spectacularly hard vertical pitch that I didn't lead. And the bottom two pitches were another climb entirely. Go figure!

So we did pieces of Iron Mouse, but apparently not the best: it seems that Iron Mouse P7 is the real wunder, but our P7 (actually P6 for us, because P4 and 5 were combined) was equally revelatory.

(Later I figured out that we most likely climbed the first two pitches of Wallfahrt (6+ and either 7- or 6- depending on where you found the information), and then the 5th pitch of "Am Ende der Sonne" for the real money pitch, which was appropriately rated 7+. I also learned about a neat combo called "Ironlaus" that strings together easy but fun climbing. Hilariously, it snags the amazing big grips on the second half of P5 "Am Ende der Sonne" then sneaks away again off to the left! Gotta do that combo...

Thanks to Georg for a fun day! Pictures here.



A view of the northeast side of the Wilder Kaiser

Hochferner Nordwand

Basti, Georg and I drove down to the Pfitschtal in Südtirol Friday evening. We got some pizza for dinner in Sterzing, then drove up to the parking lot at the end of the valley. Another party was at the car, and said their two friends had just started hiking up to the Gunther Messner bivouac hut, where we were going too. Satisfied that it wouldn't be too crowded, we packed up our rope, ice tools, snowshoes and other gear, and started hiking at 8:30 pm. It was great to be out on a summery evening, hiking up a snow-free trail. We followed it as long as we could without headlamps, which got us to snowfields, and then we could reliably follow some tracks in the snow up a big moraine to the bivouac hut.


The Gunter Messner bivouac hut with the Hochferner glacier behind.

The hut sleeps twelve, and happily there were just 5 of us tonight. By 11 pm, we were ready to sleep, having shared some food with Jörg and Andy, two guys from Bozen. We all decided to get up around 4:30 am and be hiking at 5:00 am. We didn't have a stove so no one needed to cook anything. It was a good night's sleep.

In the morning, we started out, the Tyroleans a bit ahead. From the hut we hiked up the moraine about 5 minutes to where we could drop easily onto the glacier. The Hochferner Glacier rolls and buckles, with a few interesting seracs. The climb is about 900 meters high, and boasts of an 80-degree step in the middle. Fun, fun!

We hiked up to the base of the first ice cliff and promptly avoided it by a gully on the left. Unfortunately, we suffered some injuries here! Georg got smacked in the ear by a flying chunk of ice (which hurt quite a bit...still swollen 2 days later, he says). Basti got hit in the arm. Oh well, if you aren't out the door first on these climbs, you don't really get to complain!


A bit of black ice...dirty and hard!

Above the gully, there was a mandatory bit of hard, black ice for about 40 meters. That was a nice wake up call! Now fully awake, we continued up easier (40-50 degree?) slopes for a while to the base of the upper bulge. We decided to tackle the middle of it, giving us the exciting 80 degree step, and then the option to link snowfields between blank ice and seracs. We set a belay beside Andy and Jörg, who apologized for any ice chunks! Having learned our lessons about gravity, our two parties set off on leads off to the sides of the belayers. I decided it was my turn to lead since Georg did the Petersenspitze in March! Basti was like "you guys can fight for it, I don't care!" At any rate, it was a super fun 30 meter pitch, where the first 15 meters were really steep. I don't think I ever climbed "alpine" ice that was so steep, only water ice. I could place two good ice screws for protection, then easier terrain led to where I could chop out a little belay stance. Georg and Basti came up, enjoying the pitch quite a bit.


On the 80-degree ice step


Jörg and Andy followed a line just to the left

It made sense for me to continue, this time hopefully as a simul-climb, trying to keep some amount of protection in. I went quite easily in snow for a while, then placed a couple of screws at an ice step. Another screw higher, and then after an approximately 150 meter "pitch" we gained a shelf below the summit wall. We just continued with the rope on easy but somewhat tiring steep snow up to the summit ridge, where a small cloud engulfed us.




Yay! Hochfernerspitze! 3470 meters. We enjoyed the non-view for about 0 seconds, then started down along the ridge, then dropped onto a short but steep south face with some awkward loose rock. Georg somehow zoomed down this, then took comical pictures of Basti and I contorting ourselves among the stacked blocks! We stomped down snow to a flat place for some food and water.


On top!

I'd grown to like the horrible "power energy drink" I bought the night before. Sickly sweet, almost sticky, I began to fear the liquid was contaminated with "prions" that would lodge in my brain somewhere. Diluting with water by 50% helped, and finally the massive energy drain of the ice face did the rest. Now I could declare it a good drink!

Andy and Jörg came down from the summit and joined us at our lunch spot. It was only 10 am! I think we were pretty fast overall. We had great conditions on the route, and the descent would prove to be similar. Eventually we set off down the Weisskarferner (glacier) in snowshoes. The views of Rotes Beil (2949 m) and surrounding mountains were inviting. These Zillertal peaks have sweeping bands of near vertical rock which lend drama to the scene. Sadly the rock is not good for climbing!





We reached trail and took off snowshoes. The trail was kind of annoying, as it seemed like it was always climbing up to remain high above the Gliderbach valley floor. But a "balcony" trail on the side of a valley is always amazing for views, so I have to give it that. We slowly made our way down, reaching some abandoned huts above the Oberbergbach that we climbed along the night before. A few more minutes and we were at the car, me trailing behind to give me knees some comfort, and to stop and drink from cold streams.





What a great trip! It's not as difficult of a climb as I thought it would be, but the scenery, opportunity for conditioning and companionship were excellent. Good weather made it possible! Thanks to Georg for driving too!

More photos here.

(a postscript: coming back to Munich, I couldn't take my normal U-bahn home from Georg's house, due to the impending Fußball game between Munich and Chelsea. I finally had to walk, in wet mountain boots and gear, with a pile of snowshoes and ice tools, across the city to get home! Every taxi had an Englishman or three already in it!

Untersberg adventure hike

Danno and I had a full day to go hiking, which is unusual for both of us. It's been an unusual spring, with lots of snow even at relatively low elevations. So we struggled to find a good destination. A few weeks before I'd wanted to hike up the Untersberg via the Dopplersteig, a kind of easy via-ferrata. But I was disuaded by serious warnings of cornices, avalanches and all kinds of mess. Now though, the warnings were removed because much snow had melted. It was okay...let's go do it! Additionally, since we were ready for an 8 hour hike, I thought we could put together a "grand traverse" to reach Berchtesgaden, travelling from north to south along the Untersberg crest. Thanks to a good weather forecast, this should be a rip-roaring day, ending with a beer in Berchtesgaden and some kind of taxi back to our car in the early evening.

Danno came prepared with gaitors and good boots. I made an error (that I make over and over again) thinking that tennis shoes would be adequate. Still, we had a couple of pairs of gloves and extra warm layers knowing that we'd have a fair amount of snow to deal with. The good forecast meant that even though our hands might be cold and wet as we mucked around, our backs would be warm!

We hiked up in gloomy weather on a trail that didn't fool around! The Dopplersteig starts climbing immediately, going in for long sections of wooden steps as it parallels a gorge full of waterfalls. We noticed many memorials ("Denkmals") to the fallen along the wall, with sometimes poetic sometimes rather disturbing phrases (like "God wanted it....huh?").

Joking about all kinds of things, we eventually reached snow cover in the open cirque below great cliffs of the upper mountain. We saw the tram lazily ascending above our heads. We stopped for some chocolate and noticed it was snowing lightly! Hmm.

We hiked to the base of the cliffs and started ascending stairs that wound ingeniously among them. The stairs and rocks were wet, making us take extra care on the ascent. The scenery must have been dramatic, could we see anything beyond the cloud we were in! But still, we enjoyed it. Emerging on the great plateau that makes up the west side of the mountain, we saw the summit buildings and started walking up, joking about Southern WWII sniper types who constantly mouth Bible versus. The sound of the freeway below caused me to term it "...a dishonorable, horrific manifestation of mans..."

When I stumbled for the next word, Danno said..."Hubris." Har! Perfect. From then on the disturbed southern gentlemen would accompany us throughout the day :).

At the summit FunPlex, we found a hut to eat in and ordered a hot plate of Kaiserschmarm. Mmm..good! Later, I helped a woman down a snowfield by loaning her my poles to brace herself and gave an impromptu lesson on confident snow travel. I don't think she was convinced!

Danno and I started walking south along the crest, trying to remain undeterred by the hut wardens confident assessment that it was "impossible" to reach the Mittagsscharte. Danno was worried about a via-ferrata which the map ominously indicated existed. (I didn't find this via-ferrata in my book). It started snowing rather heavily, and we tried to keep our spirits up by playing with our gps-enabled phones. We lost the trail at one point, spending 10 minutes floundering around to regain the track. The GPS was really helpful there, in the snowy murk. Needless to say, the weather wasn't turning out as predicted!

After a steep hike down, we attained the Mittagsscharte. "Wow, that was easy!" Still, deterred by the weather, we decided to try and leave the ridge here and start for the lowlands. Although the trail to the Berchtesgadener Hochthron appeared to be gentle, it was buried in snow for periods and we knew that could be expensive to find and maintain. Finally, without any grand views, motivation was understandably lacking!

So we headed down to the Toni Lenz Huette, planning to pass by the ice caves on the way. Our only concern was that this route took us through cliffs, and it was hard to tell exactly what that meant. Initially, we were pleased. We descended very dramatically through caves with windows, steep stairways and ledges blasted out of the rock. What amazing terrain! But later, we had to cross a steep snowfield lying across the trail. Initially, we tried to get on steep grass and scree underneath the trail, but this felt pretty insecure. Then we kicked steps across the snowfield. This was time-consuming and unpleasant. Our gloves were soaked and fingers cold. Without ice axes, the terrain was unnerving and required us to "over-kick" the steps to make them extremely bomber.

Once across (it's still snowing by the way), we saw that there were a few more of these. Danno noticed that by taking the ice cave detour we might be able to avoid the worst of them. This was a great idea, and worked perfectly. A couple of tenuous moves on a remnant patch of snow later, and we were looking down on the Toni Lenz Huette.

But to get there would require more snow traversals or descent. "Ugh," said Danno. I had to agree it didn't look great. I was thinking optimistically though, as long as we could convert our hiking poles into primitive ice axes by removing the bales. Also, it looked to me like we could descent more directly to the hut. Below the hut, snow continued, but we saw tracks. At this point Danno made a prudent judgement call to return the way we came, because we couldn't be sure that we wouldn't hit more impasses below the hut. Monitoring available energy and time, this made sense. So we turned around forthwith.

Back at the steep snowfield, we took a few minutes to carry out the transformation of our hiking poles into "hiking spears" that would provide more security. This did turn out to help a lot, and it's something good to remember if you find yourself dealing with snow without an ice-axe. Danno had two "spears," and I went with one sharp rock and one spear. Danno bore the brunt of the effort. His hiking boots could kick better steps, so he led the traverse, while I had the easy job of following good steps. He did a great job, but it was tough. He responded by getting mad and powering through. Way to go man! This reminded me of my own first experiences on steep snowfields. It's not easy to find security there, and really, there are no shortcuts....it takes repeated exposure across days and months before you can feel at home on that stuff. Danno was a real trooper!

Relieved to be done with that part, we quickly (tiredly!) hiked back up through the caves and got on the plateau. Visibility was better now, but it still snowed lightly. My GPS was getting low on battery...we just needed it to accomplish one more task: help us reach the Schweigermutteralm on snowed-over paths through confusing, humpy landscape.

Danno and I worked together to find and keep the trail. I kept veering off to the left, and he'd find a marker. We'd stick to it like hound dogs until another open area left room for interpretation. This was kind of fun, but a little stressful too, because we realized that if we lost the trail hopelessly, we might be forced back up to the Mittagsscharte, then forced to climb up another 200 meters to follow our path back to the lift station. Then we'd finally be able to start descending again. So it was all about keeping hopes up and making sure by looking around that we were never "lost," but could always reverse course if needed.

Happily, it didn't take too long until reaching the ski run that goes down to the Schweigermutteralm. At this point we knew we had no more uncertainties, and the "adventure" component of our trip could come to an end. Danno said with a sidelong glance, "so...you don't even do hikes at all do you, in the sense of a relaxing short walk with all variables accounted for?" I had to admit that this was true! Unless the fambly is along!

We enjoyed the hike down the ski trail, though our knees didn't have as much fun. We hiked up to the base of a cliff and sat in a deer blind for a few minutes. We kept going, talking about school, kids, college, etc. Later, we hiked a "shortcut" road that led us into yet another mini-adventure: we had to cross through a mine site with some impressive marble blocks. The bridge we expected to cross was destroyed, but new wooden planks provided a safe way across an elaborately decayed structure. Below, there was a yawning abyss with red-stained rock and waterfalls threaded by broken logs. The road came to an end and we found our way down an alarmingly steep cog-railway track that we surmised was used long-ago to lower marble blocks. Once in town, we walked tiredly through mundane streets to our car, back to the northeast.

What a day! Almost 12 hours long and almost constantly on the move. I actually like days like this but I can feel Danno glowering at me! We worked on navigation, snow, decision making. These are the classic skills of mountaineering, and nothing counts more in the ledger books that experience. We saw a lot of wild country and had effectively no one out on the trail with us. Alone in the clouds we created a story that tested us and (sometimes) entertained us. We've got the sore muscles to prove it!

Thanks to Danno for a fun time (really!). :)