Ettringen in november

Nice but cold and wet weekend in Ettringen with Jeroen. We climbed at Schiffsbug at next day in Zeckenloch. Mordor is currently closed due the potential breading activity of bubo bubo...

 

xzc

 

Ecrins 2019

Andreas and I spent one week in the Ecrins, we planned to climb the SSE-ridge of Pic Gaspard but did not get any further than the start of the route. Nevertheless we had a nice week together, climbing some easy alpine stuff, sport climbing and dreaming of bigger routes...

 on our way to the hut


approach to the start of the Point Emma traverse integrale

on the traverse, nice views on the south face of La Meije, which we climbed a few years ago...

 interesting and long approach from the hut to the base of the SSE ridge of Pic Gaspard

SSE ridge...

Ettringen

Plenty of crack climbing end of august 2019 with Jeroen...

Annot and Orco

In july Marieke and I went to Annot (France) and to Valle del Orco (Italy) to see some nice cracks for climbing.

Ettringen Episode 1 2019

Last weekend we started our crack season in Ettringen, so happy to be back with Marieke and Mike. New sectors and routes for us at the Steingarten, Schatzinsel and Greenhorn.
Absolut must climb the finger and hand crack on the far left at Schatzinsel, Faustrecht at Greenhorn and some other pretty cool hand cracks....

Chamonix

Last alpine ice trip is three years ago when Jeroen and I climbed the north face of Les Courtes. Since then either the weather had been unstable or conditions had been insufficient or both… With the hot summers and dry autumns it is getting more difficult to find routes in condition and worth climbing it. 

Last week Jeroen and I were lucky enough to recover the old alpine winter feeling although we could not finish our route (Mallory-Porter on the north face of Aig. Du Midi). We set up our tent at the plan des aiguilles and next morning startet at 6 AM. At 8 AM we were at the start of the route. The steep first snow gully was pretty filled with soft snow and after 1 hour we made traverse to the right where conditions improved a lot. Steep neve brought us to the rocky section (4b). It was really nice rock climbing for 25 meters or so. We took 4 cams with us what is absolutely sufficient for this section. 

We continued but were faced with increasing wind that forced us to hide behind rocks… further up it looked much more severe and we decided to retreat. At the cable car station we got info that the Midi cable car did not go the whole day because of wind up to 100km/h.

A bit disappointed but more important to me: revival of the alpine ice feeling, the winter climbing, camping in the snow, everything worth the trip! As add on we climbed in LeFayet and Servoz. We'll be back.

 

 Le Fayet

Servoz