Sonnenspitze

difficulty: 5-
altitude: 2417
month: September

the best information can be found here:  sonnenspitze

Matterhorn of Ehrwald. It has still far from real Matterhorn, but its shape may certainly attract many climbers and hikers. There are two routes over south ridge, one is via-ferrata (good escape plan in case of bad weather) and the second is climbing route following the ridge very precisely. Whenever you don't know, where the route is exactly leading, go closer the ridge.

stolen from wikipedia

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I forgot my camera hence the picture provided here is stolen from somewhere else. I regret it a little bit, since I could make really astonishing pictures of dramatic clouds and my beautiful wife hanging by crag in vertical sections. On the other hand, there is too much pictures, videos and all kind of stuff presenting how awesome people are (and I contributed already a lot as well), so why not to take it little bit more simpler and fluent with no cameras. It gives an opportunity to stay for a while and rather remember the moment or a view as strongly, as one is capable to do so. I really can realize that my remembers are stronger from this outing. And my wife is not talking about anything else, than Sonnenspitze. 

I like to the round trips not using the same way for descent. The trip has somehow larger value for me, if one can do full traverse of the mountain. The round has to make sense, although I can not tell any specific rules for that. My path on the map above could look a bit better, namely during descent, where we misleadingly used the route more on the east. There was one simple reason for that. The mountain hut over there serves incredibly tasty sweet dumplings with vanilla sauce. And once you eat such a good thing, you definitely don't want to climb up the hill back to the correct route. You simply rather descent the via ferrata marked as the most difficult (E), see the second exclamation mark in the map. This costed us 1 hour of time. On the other hand, it was quite an adventure.

At 7 pm, we arrived back to our friends to the camp. Well, in reality some of the friends were still hanging somewhere in the walls around Ehrwald, but this is different story.

Ultraks 2016

I will update this soon.

Amazing run, with breathtaking views all the way long. I guess one of the most worthwhile run in the alps. Please don't read the shit I am going to write here, and just register yourself for next year here: ultraks

if you beat Killian's time, or if you are even close to that, you definitely doesn't belong to the earth, but to some other place in space-time.

Mt. Gele

difficulty: pd+
altitude: 3504
month: August

The difficulty is only roughly estimated. I found only one outing documented here.  At that outing, the required is set to 3b. Me personally, I would rise it a bit to 4a (ad-). But can well be, that we haven't found the most optimal route on the ridge. The route shall be however rated tougher due to the loose rock.

It is rather long tour from Mauvoisin and the such a tour directly from there is highly demanding. We intended anyway to reach also Ruinette, thus the decision was to use a camp at very convenient and strategical place, namely bellow the glacier du Brenay.

Mt. Gele, the west ridge on the right

The Monday started with clear sky and Martina, Dada and me enjoyed the tour to the pass Fenetre de Durand. Martina felt not in good shape a and returned back into BC. We started to climb first crags not roped. But soon, the difficulty of the climbed reached the level, that we decided to rope up.

On the left picture: Ruinette, on the right picutre: the ridge we intended to climb.

The ridge is pure. Pure in sense that there is nothing left from previous climbs. One needs to use purely his own belay. At the very low parts, we lost the most optimal route, and got to the wall on the right. This was however not a big issue, just moving up was little bit tougher. Real issues occurred at the middle of the ridge, where the rock becomes very loose. Holds and steps which one can not believe and reliability of own belay in this rock is very fishy.

Complete end of the ridge is again very nice. It looks like 100 meters of vertical crag, but in the end, it is quite easy. The tour back to BC was already easy, but still physically demanding. As one can see in the map, it crosses two passes and one still gain few altitude meters. We almost descended down onto Italian side, but the forests looked really weird -  I didn't remember any forests around the lake on the Swiss side. I took me a while to realize, that we are descending on wrong side of the mountain. Fortunately, we were in good physical shape, and returned the BC before the dinner - great Pasta prepared by Simone, who came from Mauvoisin just an hour before us. The fog covered the whole area in the evening, so we, as well as Simeone, were lucky to arrive on time.

Aig. du Tour

difficulty: f
altitude: 3540
month: August

This one-day tour starts in Le Tour and leads to the summit of Aig. du Tour. Simply, it is nice glacier tour. My tour partner was Simone, with whom I have already climbed some crags.

The bottom part of the glacier can be walked without rope. Firstly, snow was firm, secondly crevasses were uncovered. But as we ascended higher and higher, snow was softer and softer, so we decided to rope up.

There is very fe technical steps last 100 metres bellow the summit. Firstly, one has to get over crevasse in steep snow field bellow the foot of the summit rock, and then the rock itself. Shall not be however an issue for most of the people.

The mountain gods: Chardonet, Verte, Blanc

The granite of Chomonix, white snow and blue sky are the wonderful combination, the pleasure for my eyes. I admit it would be better without the crowd of people. If I have that power, I would forbid them to come there. Fortunately, I have not that power and people can enjoy this mountain as well.

Beautiful unnamed peak, unfortunately, climbing there is quite short so it is not worth to take all the equipment. Maybe from the other side?

Descent back to Le Tour

Running. Another passion. Highly recommended. Only in mountains.