The plan was simple, head over to his house in Munich, climb as much ice as possible, and try and do some decent ski-mountaineering, all in day trips.
This was quite a daunting prospect for someone who hadn't been skiing for 5 years, and spent next to no time ski-touring at all, but I'm all for new things.
So the flights were booked, and with a little help from UKC I sourced some cheap touring skis. The only thing I needed were proper ski-touring boots.
After a short flight and what felt like forever on the train, I was in his flat in central Munich. Plan for the morning was to run out to a huge gear shop (over 5 floors, easily 500 square metres on each floor! I wish we had them in the UK) to pick up a set of ski boots. Then we were off our for an "easy" ski tour to warm up.
Several hours later, I was seriously beginning to question my own level of fitness.
Unfortunately I ended up falling very short this day, about 100 vertical metres from the summit. So it became time to ski down.
Going skiing in thigh deep powder, as well as being on skis for the first time in 5 years, was not the time to learn that my bindings were set no-where near tight enough! Every time I made a slightly aggressive turn (and I'm not an aggressive skier) ski came off, head over heels and I'm digging my way out the snow again. As well as searching for my skis!
To appease me a little, German agreed to come looking for some roadside ice the next day. This was one of the best climbing days out I've ever had. Down a little snow covered road, we pulled up next to a very pretty bridge which I took a liking to.
Less than two minutes walk from here. We were at the bottom of the icefall. I'm unsure on grading but I think possibly WI2? Maybe 80m with a short vertical section towards the top.
The first pitch looked awesome, but being a good guy, I decided to let Alex take the lead.
The ice down the bottom was really good, quite plastic but a bit delicate at the bottom. After setting up a mostly bomber belay. The second pitch was mine, looking not quite as nice as the first, but a little harder being steeper with a vertical section.
This was just before the vertical section. Just below where the ropes disappear was the belay so I decided now may be a good time for a piece of protection. Glad of it I was too, when the vertical section turned out to be quite bad ice...
A bit of a walk lead to another 60-70 degree short pitch of ice which Alex did on lead, just for a bit of ice screw practice.
A series of short (good) ice steps, all with a bit of a walk inbetween, lead to the final pitch of the route. For a bit of speed we decided to solo these steps. This is Alex on an easier one.
And then he took this picture of me on an easy section, I think its quite a cool picture.
After about 6-7 of these ice steps, we got to the final pitch. A 12-13m nigh on vertical section of ice set on top of a lower section of 60 degree ice about 15m high which we'd soloed. The locals we'd been following up the route had decided it was too hard for them, so magically, it became my lead. This is me about 7 metres up, pooing a little.
This topped us out on the climb. Normally, the walk down is my nemesis (after the approaches anyway) but this one actually ended up quite nice through a cool little forest, even had some facilities provided on the way down.
The day after this, it was best of both worlds, skiing and climbing, which in my mind just sounds like ultimate cardio hell. To start the day we drove into this tiny little sledging area, which lifted people up to come down on sledges, we quickly bypassed this and skiied off into the back country, to find one of the prettiest mountains I've ever seen.
We ascended up the easy slope you can see on the right hand side, nice gentle slope, and in usual style, I quickly fell behind the fat German.
But before long, we were on the summit, striking extremely gay poses and looking forward to the nearly untracked descent the other side of the mountain.
The startling slope was awesome, maybe 30 degrees of knee deep powder. This is where things got interesting, the normal descent was blocked by a large amount of avalanche debris...we decided that may not be the best way to descend and I headed left into the forest, german headed right to the other side of the debris.
Once inside this bit of the forest though, I noticed it was between 45 and 50 degrees, which is really too steep for someone as bad as me to ski!
As time went on it gradually got steeper, feeling close to 60 degrees with steps even steeper! I sideslipped alot of it, holding onto trees after hiding one pole in my rucksack.
This picture is a reminder to me how easy it is to fall into a bad situation. Though to be honest, I expected the sheer terror to show up a bit better.
Anyway, soon we were out the forest, refilling water at a lovely little stream and facing a steep ski back up another mountain. Unfortunately no summit photo. Eventually we ended up at the base on Blankenstein. A rock feature with plenty of summer routes, but no winter routes. We eyed up our line from afar.
We cached gear at the bottom (skis etc) and moved nice and light up the route. Started on easy mixed ground around 60 degrees. Here german managed to capture my favourite picture of me!
Soon we arrived on an awesome ridge line and the rope came out. We switched leads along this ridge instead of moving together as the snow was rather precarious. Almost simultaneously I caught a nice picture of german almost swimming up the final pitch, and him of me on a belay.
This lead to the final pitch, strictly speaking, it should of been Germans as there was plenty of rope left, however, it looked hard, therefore it appeared to be my lead. Again, I must applaud Germans excellent skill with a camera.
Soon I was at the top of the pitch, and there was NOTHING to belay off, I started to hammer in a piton into a tiny fingernail crack, but my gloves were soaking wet and making it hard to hold the piton, so I took them off. The second I took my gloves off the hotaches hit, and I'm not talking little stinging hotaches. I dropped onto the floor and started rolling around screaming, attached to nothing on a ridge, the pain was excruciating. The only thing that comes near is when I broke my back. At this point german decided to helpfully shout up "You're supposed to be belaying, not wanking". This brought me back to this world and I carried on building my shocking belay, consisting of a knifeblade in less than half an inch, and a nut in a flaring crack.
So up we brought the german, warning him to be very careful as the belay was a bit crap. Once he arrived, he kindly pointed out the bolt just behind me that I'd missed (bit of a habit for me this).
We quickly nipped round the corner to the summit cross and filled in the first winter noting in the logbook.
So we started to descend, nice little abseils nearly the entire way. Apart from a little walking along the ridge.
Now the fun started, we had to get back to the lift, as it was winter and already about 4pm...this wasn't looking good. We picked up our gear from the cache and started heading back. Route was slightly different from the approach taking us further down into the valley to then skin back up to the lift. Skiing was brilliant on the way back down to the valley.
Eventually we arrived at the valley bottom and started putting skins on again, as you can see from the picture below, it was starting to get a little dark and german came out with the immortal line "I won't get my headtorch out yet, so you get another chance to catch your breath in five minutes"
Then the long slog up hill started, this really wasn't fun, very few pictures were taken and none-of them were good. But after about two hours of uphill in the pitch black we started to see a light, a powerful beacon of light, in the distance.
This raised hopes, so I picked up my pace and raced (slightly faster than snails pace in my world) up the hill to discover it was the church, about 400m from the lift!
The day was over! Except...it wasn't. Not quite yet. The lift was shut. The time been past midnight, we'd been too preoccupied to notice. The only way down was the groomed sled run, what a shame. We were so dissappointed.
As an interesting side note. my gloves had got so wet that day that in the minute or so I'd took them off to remove skins, they were frozen absolutely solid. I did end up with hands so cold that day that the tips of my fingers are still a little desensitized on my right hand.
Anyway, we start to ski down this sledge run. Pisted sledge runs are very fast, very dark in the forest, and not very wide for turns at all (the width of a piste beaster). The picture below doesn't really do it justice, but I enjoy the picture alot. Also, these sledge runs aren't very fun when you meet a piste beaster coming the other way.
The day concluded with a McDonalds! German McDonalds still do McRibs.....I was very jealous.
The next day was going to be an ice cragging day. Not many pictures were took but again, an awesome day out at a little crag 10 minutes from the road. The guidebook had shown some nice WI3, WI4 routes there. The first route we walked past though was this.
A 30m vertical (trust me, it was) free standing ice pillar. WI5+ the guidebook gave it. There was no option, we had to do it. So down we went to where you see the bags below, and started racking up. Before we knew it, everything was white, my brain started racing "WOW, this is an avalanche, this is cool" quickly seconded by "Shit, this is an avalanche, MOVE!" but before long it had stopped. It was simply some snow from above the route falling down. Unfortunately for German, his bag had been open at the time.
It was at this point, that although looking hard, German decided he would like the lead. Since I'd copped all the good leads this trip, it seemed only fair.
He started off well, moving well round to the front of the pillar and heading upwards on good ice. Before long I started to hear "Oh no, oh no, this is bad, ASH, LOWER ME, LOWER ME NOW". Turns out the ice was not so good higher up. He described it as having the consistency of a slush puppy.
Knowing German to occasionally be a bit over cautious, I decided that this was probably one of those times, so I should attempt to lead it. We swapped ends of rope and off I went. To start with the ice was brilliant, but as soon as I was 5m off the floor, it did indeed go to slush puppy consistency. Ice screws were pushing in, easier than they would in snow. Kicking my crampons into place resulted in my entire boot being buried, but sliding downwards, and ice axes when swung were placing half the axe as well. None of these placements held weight very well at all, and the only way to progress was to, for want of a better word, run up the feature, weighting any particular placement for the minimum amount of time to ensure the tiniest amount of downwards slide. It didn't help that by this time in the day, a waterfall was effectively coming down the pillar, soaking me to the bone. Again, my gloves did not take this very well.
Eventually the top out came and there I was, I belayed off two screws in brilliant ice that you'd be forgiven for mistaking as glacial and a great big tree root and brought up German. This lead to our abseil down (you can see the waterfall a bit better here).
We finished off the day with some easier soloing, mostly on what the locals told us wasn't good ice! They must of been delusional, in Scotland you'd have been queuing for these.
The short walk out finished off the day, a perfect ice cragging day? Probably not, but a damn fun one.
The final day was to be an innocent little ski tour, lift up, skin a bit higher than the lift, across a huge bowl, skin up, summit, ski down, down a bowl and join a piste to finish at the car. It almost worked like this too.
Unfortunately, I got no photos of the start of the trip, especially as the bowl was incredibly to just contour across and looked brilliant. After the bowl though, the conditions started to close in, luckily, there were signs everywhere, but none for the peak we wanted.
Eventually though, we got a little clearing in the fog and cloud and caught sight of our peak. "That way" we shouted and off we went, German deciphering from the map we needed to head up through the forest and then left along a ridge line and we'd notice the summit slopes on the right.
Before long we were facing this.
And German was staring at the map, the ridge line had come to naught and was heading back down hill. This was definately not right, after 5 minutes of map staring, I had the bright idea to get out a compass, yup, the map was 100% upside down. So we heading along with the ridgeline to our left this time and noticed that the snow was starting to get a little thin, we battled onwards until we got out the cloud and could see the summit, we decided to cache gear and walk.
After 20/30 minutes of plodding up icy rocks we summitted, the cloud had returned, but not before I managed to capture a nice, scene kid self shot in the sun.
Then the ski back down to the car started. Remember how I said there was an awesome bowl for skiing? Well there was, completely untracked, and whilst the weather wasn't on our side, the snow certainly was. These were some of the most enjoyable turns I've ever made. I wish it never ended. Lets pretend it didn't, because after the next photo, the batteries ran out of the camera.
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