Wirklich oben bist Du nie (VI+), Gimpel Vorbau, 3rd September 2023

I climbed this with Mario's friend Rolf. (Mario and Martina climbed Morgenstund and their friends Jürgen and Rosi climbed Jedem Tierchen sein Plaisirchen.)

All of the six pitches were VI or VI+. Bolt spacing was like on a well-bolted sport crag. The climbing was good and at my upper limit, especially since I still had a problem on the ring finger of my right hand after hurting it at the wall a month earlier.

Rolf led the first pitch, which was the longest and most sustained. Pitch four started with some heikele Steherei (tricky standing around, i.e. slab climbing).

Rolf in Wirklich oben bist Du nie

Rolf abseiled, whereas I descended on foot with Mario and Martina from the top of their route.

Due to the lack of a logical line the route felt more like six sport climbs one after the other, but set against that the hard moves were good climbing and the rock was solid everywhere, with almost no grass and no loose easy sections.

Ma-Ma Kante (V+), Kreuzwand, Karwendel, 24th September 2023

Michij and I caught the first train down to Garmisch, then hitched from there to Mittenwald. With this trick we were at the start almost an hour earlier than two weeks previously with Robert.

At the start of the Ma-Ma Kante

We then swung leads, saving another few minutes per pitch. Unlike two weeks earlier we succeeded in getting back down to Mittenwald by daylight.

Climbing onto the "elephant"

 

On the descent

Ma-Ma Kante (V+), Kreuzwand, Karwendel, 10th September 2023

This route was rebolted in 2016, and I think that this means that it was also made directer with some harder climbing over better rock taking the place of some looser but easier pitches. This is certainly the case on the first pitch, and there were some pitches further up which I don't remember from last time and which offered good climbing on solid rock.

Walking up to the Kreuzwand

The first pitch and a grade V pitch further up were super. Also the supposed crux pitch, which I do remember from last time, is still pretty good. However, the pitch 10, which I must also have climbed last time, was too hard for me this time. I needed to do a move just above the belay A0, and I then gave up at the third bolt and lowered off that. We then escaped via the easy exit to the left.

Robert in the first pitch

The two grade III pitches in the middle marked as heikel (tricky) really were. They were unprotected and unprotectable, at least with nuts and Friends.

The sun was setting as we scrambled along the ridge, and it was twilight by the time we descended to the col and then walked down the scree slopes back to the Dammkar Hut. We then drank something at the hut before walking back to Mittenwald by the light of our headtorches.

Overall I enjoyed the route much more than the last time. I would like to go back to get the time down to 30 or preferably 25 minutes per pitch, and to finish the climb via the normal last two pitches rather than baling out via the easy exit.

Kirchlexpress (VI), Totenkirchl, 31st July 2023

I climbed this with Christian, a new climbing partner who had an ad on the website of the German Alpine Club (DAV).

Kirchlexpress, lower section

I walked up to the Stripsenjochhaus on the previous evening and we met up for the first time at the start of the climb. We started climbing at 8:20 and got to the top of the climb at 16:40, then back to the hut at 19:15. The climb was typical for a newer "alpine" sport climb at that grade, i.e. not much of a logical line, and more of an attempt to connect sections of climbable rock together to make a whole climb. However, there were not much grass and not much loose rock, and the climbing on the harder pitches was at times quite good.

Kirchlexpress, upper section

I also enjoyed the descent. Once the red markings have been found there is not much danger of losing the way. We downclimbed the upper abseil pitches, but the lower ones were steeper and maybe longer, so we abseiled those. We got lost shortly before the hut at a point where it turned out that it is necessary to climb up an easy rocky slab to the right to get to the top of a hummock from which it is then possible to walk down directly to the hut.

Kirchlexpress, exit cracks

 

Dolomites, 8th - 14th July 2023

Felix and I formed one rope, while Mario and his friend Rolf joined us as another on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday. We stayed on the Camping Alla Baita to the north of the Lago di Misurina. The shower and wash block here was very primitive, and I don't intend to go back there before this is improved.

Sat. 8th July: Torre Wundt, Mazzorana, IV+

Torre Wundt

Driving down from Germany we got to the campsite at the Misurinasee at 11:15 and set off for the Torre Wundt at about 12:00, reaching the start at maybe 13:30. We ignored the signs that it was clouding over and likely to start raining, and started climbing. Felix and I had reached the second belay and Mario and Rolf the first when it started to rain, whereupon we abseiled. I wondered at first whether we should have waited it out, but in fact it carried on and we were soaking wet by the time we reached the Fonda Savio Hut for a bowl of soup.

Sun. 9th July: Averau, Alvera, IV+

We left the campsite at around eight and got to the Fedare Hut on the side of the Passo Giau just before nine. From there we walked up to the top station of the chair lift and traversed across to the bottom of the easy ground at the bottom, then scrambled up to the bottom of the south face, which was not difficult, but exposed in places, and I wouldn't have liked to have come back down that way. There were lots of parties (five?) above us, and we had to wait for ages both to start and then at every stance. It was five o'clock before we got to the top.

Averau, Alvera, traverse pitch

The rightwards traverse in the fourth pitch was just super, with big hand- and footholds and just one mildly tricky move right before the next belay. This pitch was the best of the route, but there was some other worthwhile climbing on some of the others. The way down included a steep and exposed via ferrata. The next time I will take a via ferrata set with me, or at very least keep my harness on and clip in with a sling.

Mon. 10th July: Torre Wundt, Mazzorana, IV+

This time we completed the climb in good weather. Thick iron ring pegs at the first four belays. The third pitch is graded with III in the Bernardi guide, but is more like IV or IV+. According to Felix I placed nine runners on this pitch.

Torre Wundt, first abseil

We got the descent wrong at first. The correct descent is:

1. Walk over the summit ridge to an abseil anchor at its westernmost end.
2. About 10 m directly beneath this abseil anchor is the point where the gully a part of which is climbed by pitch 6 (Benardi guide) reaches its highest point before falling off again to the west. Abseil down from the summit ridge and down the westward side of the gully (rightwards looking out) to a ring anchor on the north side of the ridge connecting the main summit with the west summit, perhaps 20 m in total from the summit ridge.
3. Abseil several (three?) more times, each time about 20 m, to more ring anchors.
4. From the final ring anchor abseil as far as possible (e.g. almost 30 m if abseiling with a single 60 m rope), then descend an exposed path, trending leftwards (facing out, probably northwards or northwestwards). Skirt around the base of the cliffs on the north side of the mountain crossing one or maybe two cols until the top of the gully is reached which descends to the left of the south face, and descend this relatively easily to reach the bottom of the south face.

 11th & 12th July

Weather forecast uncertain and so went walking.

Thu. 13th July: Monte Popena Basso, Mazzorana, IV

We walked up the path starting just to the left of the Hotel Dolomiti on the side of the main road by the turning for Camping Alla Baita and Drei Zinnen. The the ground at the bottom of the face itself is flat, but the last few metres leading up to it are scree and rubble which are steep enough that a nervous partner might be glad of a rope.

Monte Popena Basso, Mazzorana

The route was pleasant with thick iron ring pegs and glued in pitons at the stances, other than at the top, at which there was just a piece of old rope tied to a dwarf pine, and good climbing almost throughout. Felix stepped on a loose block at the start of the last pitch, which fell the whole height of the route without hitting the face once before landing on the screes below. Before the rope came tight he scraped down the rock, getting scratches on one arm, both knees and one ankle. It started to rain just as Felix was seconding this pitch.

From the top we traversed about 30 m to the right (north) to meet up with a track which led upwards (south) to meet up with a marked footpath which traverses the mountain from north to south, and followed this in steady rain southwards over the summit, descending pleasantly and easily to the cluster of restaurants at the southern end of the Lago di Misurina.

Fri. 14th: First Sella Tower, Steger, IV+

From the Locomotive we headed along the left (north) side of ridge leading to the start, which ended in an exposed climb of a few metres to reach the foot of the route, for which we roped up. The next time I shall continue along the right (south) side of the ridge after the Locomotive.

On the First Sella Tower, Langkofel in background

I enjoyed the climbing more than I remember enjoying it last time. The best two pitches were those immediately above the rightwards walking traverse. Most stances had thick iron rings, but the stance at the right hand end of the traverse and directly below the crack of the first of these pitches only had one old peg, which I improved with a Friend and a Camalot. The second of these pitches had several pegs runners and one bolt. I found this easier than I remember it from my ascent with Ingo in October 2006.

Wrong descent from First Sella Tower

We got the descent wrong here too at first. We traversed the summit but then tried to descend the slopes to the left (looking out, i.e. the east) of the exit of the Trenker Crack, i.e. still on the First Sella Tower, finding a bolted belay before the ground steepened which looked like an abseil anchor. We abseiled almost the full 60 m from this, but the rope got stuck and didn't pull through. We then spent ages trying to find the way up the correct descent in order to rescue the ropes. After having reached the top of the route at half past four it was eight o'clock before we got back to the car.

The correct descent is: Traverse the summit of the First Sella Tower to the col connecting this to the Piz Ciavazes, and cross this col onto the Piz Ciavazes. Walk and then scramble down from here, following a path and at times cairns. This descent now has many bolts, so it should be possible to belay a nervous partner down here.

The last few feet back to flat ground

Felix and I down-climbed the last few meters from the abseil ring from which Ingo had insisted on abseiling seventeen years earlier. I also found this easier than I remember it from my visit with Ingo.

Schüsselkarspitze / Scharnitzspitze, 24th / 25th June 2023

Rain in the night of Friday to Saturday. Saturday morning was wet and cool with low cloud. Armin and I had originally wanted to do the Jörg / Simon, but we waited first for the rock to dry. By the time we got up to the bottom of the Siemens / Wolf it was still cold and there were still a lot of water streaks on the rock, so we decided to do the Hannemann on the Scharnitzspitze instead.

Rockfall debris beneath the Hannemann on the Scharnitzspitze

The bottom of the Hannemann was covered in brown dust, and the ground at the bottom of the climb was covered in debris from a rockfall. We decided that we didn't know where exactly it had come from and that we didn't want to risk there being more loose rock up there which could fall on us, so decided against this route as well. We ended up doing Phantasia, a new route which follows more or less the same line as the Siemens / Wolf just a few metres further to the right. Armin got the two hardest pitches and I was glad that he did, since they seemed hard to me for V+.

The abseil down to the Wangscharte

The standard descent seems now to be to scramble along the ridge from the finish of the Siemens / Wolf and down to a single glued bolt, then abseil from this (28 m) down to the flat area which I used to reach by abseiling straight from the top of the Siemens / Wolf and then making an exposed traverse to the right (looking outwards, i.e. towards the west). From here walk and then scramble down past another glued bolt to a huge abseil ring marked by a red arrow on a metal rod. Abseil from this (45 m) down to the Wangscharte, and from there back down to the bottom (56 m).

Michij in the Siemens / Wolf

On the Sunday Michij and I did the Siemens / Wolf. This was pretty different from how I remember it. I remember more grass and I don't remember the belay in the niche (where there is now also a belay belonging to Phantasia on the other side). In particular I don't remember the difficult face climbing in the last pitch, although I guess maybe I climbed a different last pitch last time.

Phantasia had a hard crux on the first pitch which I was glad not to climb. The Siemens Wolf had a few metres of nice climbing at the start of the last pitch. Otherwise both routes had a lot of badly protected low grade wandering. Neither was particularly good.

Sarca Valley, 18th - 21st May 2023

Ascension Day is a bank holiday in Bavaria which gives a four day weekend, and the plan was to get down to the Dolomites for my first time climbing (apart from two or three visits to sport crags) since the Fussstein in 2010. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas, with snow falling and lying all the way down to the valley, so, as so often, the solution became Arco.

On the first day we climbed the Via Teresa (VI) on the Sonnenplatten, as they are known to German-speaking climbers, or the Parete Zebrata as the Italians call them. This was a nice length at 400 m / 15 pitches, and the grade VI pitches were sort of fun, but the experience taken as a whole didn't have me itching to get back there. What came next was more fun, however.

 I had first heard the name Heinz Grill from a non-climbing neighbour who used to like going to Arco for yoga courses with him. At that time almost all I knew about multi-pitch climbs in the Sarca Valley came from the Versante Sud guidebook Pareti del Sarca by Diego Filippi and that meant fairly steep and serious routes starting at about VI+ with peg belays and maybe a few more pegs in between, such as Cesare Levis or Via del Missile. To cut a long story short, Heinz Grill has been pretty busy with his Hilti over the past twenty years, and the fruits of a lot of his labours are presented in the new guidebook Arco Plaisir by Florian Kluckner.

The first of these we tried was the Via Helena on a valley-level crag with the grandiose name of Monte Colt, for which you park next to the river and walk all of about three minutes to get to the start of the routes in some dense bush. This is an eight pitch route graded VI+, on which we learnt what is meant by the Heinz Grill protection style: bolts on the hard bits, a lot of in-situ threads, and every now and again a crack left alone so that you are glad you brought your rack along after all. The highlight of the Via Helena is a large overhang with the most enormous jugs which I have ever experienced outside of a climbing wall. I climbed this in a hurry, fearing that it had to get harder at some point, but it just didn't. Another time I would take my time and enjoy it some more.

On the last day we climbed La Luna Argentea (VI/A0) on the Piramide Lakshmi, another super route with some lovely pitches easily as good as anything on a single pitch sport crag and the same style of protection as on the Via Helena.