Steve and I were originally headed for Abenteuerland, a long multipitch on Göll in Berchtesgaden. The VI route is famous for two pitches climbed through a cave in the mountain, but early season snow had filled them with a large ice pitch! So we opted for Sommer Sonne Sonnenschein next to it, dodging the snow patches up 450m of limestone runnels.
A wonderful day, which began with the stiff hike from Hinterschießlingalm, past the Sonnenstein and up to the ridgeline at 2100m. Our plan had been to traverse the airy ridgeline across to Scheffauer, but we stopped at Wiesberg and chose to retrace our steps, leaving the rest of the ridge for another day. One to return to in winter perhaps?
As a consolation for our failures on the Großglockner, Will and I stopped by at the Kleiner Barmsteine on our way home. The south ridge was a very fun new way up to a summit I know well.
Intense spindrift and driving winds gusting up the gully gave it quite a Scottish feel. Some interesting freezing belays, I've never had so much ice frozen across my face before. A great introduction to Scottish winter climbing for Cat and Louise!
Walked off in a full-on white out back to the ski car park
Today was another cold and white day, so I took Martha and Naomi along the Sron Na Lairig ridge. They didn't seem too tired after we summitted, so we completed the day with a traverse around to Bidean Nam Bian and a hitch back up the road to the car. Exhausting, but brilliant!
A full day out of type 2(.5) fun. Busy ferries meant we were restricted to a single day hit on foot from the mainland. It was going to be tight.
The approach took about 2.5 hours, and the first sight of the 137m tall stack is pretty intimidating. I led P1, a pile of sandy, jenga rubble, before Al pulled a marathon stint to get through the dirty off-width "coffin" on pitch 2's crux. A little French-free saw me through the move out of the chimney and up p3 before Al finished the route, including the spectacular, stack-splitting final corner pitch. This time, all fluffy white cruxes were easily dealt with by kind, gentle words.
Descent in 3 abseils was slick and we hit the ground at 5pm. The last ferry was 6:30pm, so we covered the long path to Rackwick in 30 minutes and were lucky to hitch to the last ferry home. Thanks to Erinna for some smart thinking on setting up the logistics for us!
The most type 2 day I've had in years.
