My vertical world: February 2017

Last year I hadn’t been to Kandersteg for ice climbing – too warm - no ice. The year before I climbed the Haizähne with Bernd and Crack Baby with Rolf. The ice seasons changed in the last ten years. When I started ice climbing it was not unusual to find enough ice in Kandersteg even before christmas. This years ice climbing season started in the second week of januari. Last week we had four pretty cool ice climbing days. When we left on Sunday it should get warm again next week with temperatures around 5-10 degrees during the day and at night not below zero. Maybe this is the end of the ice climbing season 2017: not more than 4 weeks!

Anyway, we had a cool program:

Wednesday: Arbonium (WI 5-) and Pingu (WI 5+).
Thursday: easy trainingday on Grimm and first pitch of Eiszwerge (WI 3-4).
Friday: Rübezahl (WI 6).
Saturday: Eiszwerge (WI 5+, M6).

I leadclimbed all the hard pitches. Rübezahl has three steep pitches comparabel with Crack Baby at the Breitwangfluh. The second steep pitch was really nice and exposed ice climbing. We didn’t climb the last two easy pitches because of growing spin drifts (60 cm fresh snow on sunday, northern exposition and more than 5cm fresh snow that day). Good reason to come back!

The Robert Jasper route “Reise in das Reich der Eiszwerge“ is a pretty cool mixed/ice climb in Kandersteg. According to one of the local mountain guides the best mixed route in this grade! Very airy traverse out of the cave of the „ice dwarfs” on a slab with 1 or 2 cm of soft ice. There are two pitons and I placed also some small friends. The climbing itself is not very hard but technical. Really nice. For Peter this was pretty tough to follow. He wanted to go down after that pitch. So we didn’t finish the final ice ramp (80 degrees). Also a good reason to come back.

For me this was a very very satisfying trip, cool routes together with my brother and the first two days also with Bernd. Thanks guys.

We spent our nights at the Gemmi Lodge – very kind owners and nice European prices (35,00 Sfr per night incl. breakfast). It’s also possible to cook for yourself!!! www.gemmi-lodge.com

early morning start at Arbonium...

first pitch, very wet...

really wet...

Bernd leading the first pitch of the upper part of Pingu

from the upper belay through a hole to start the final steep pitch of Pingu...

Peter getting his lead climbing training at the first pitch of the Eiszwerge

Next morning at the start of Rübezahl - exciting!

In the first pitch of Rübezahl - the first belay is on the left at the large ledge. Belay of the second pitch is in the hole on the right almost at the top of the waterfall. Thereafter it's another steep 25 meters where the waterfall angle eases, then it's another 15 m to the belay on the right (not on the left as indicated in the guidebook)