Trip Report – Alpine Rock Climbing September 2003
by Gabe Williams
I met Astrid on Saturday in Gossau, south of Lake Constance. She had just successfully completed a German Alpine club course for instructors for alpine rock climbing. Despite a hard week of instruction, leading climbs and various tests she was in good spirits. Her only injury during the week came at the celebration party in the hut after the course – they were playing some coordination game that involves balancing on beer bottles (I still don't understand it, despite hearing the explanation 3X). She slipped and banged her nose on the floor, she looked a bit like a boxer who had had a tough round. Her nose did not seem broken, just black and blue and sore. The subjective dangers of climbing are not to be underestimated!!
The weather was pretty bad, rainy and cool, and we debated where to head next. After checking the alpine weather forecast (snow down to 2300m) we decided to first head to Chur and relax before going further south to the mountains.
In Chur we walked around the city, shopped a bit, got some groceries and found a hotel. Astrid took a long-awaited shower and we enjoyed a tasty lunch in the hotel room of Caprese salad (tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella) and fresh avocados. All of the things that you don't get on the menu at mountain huts… After a great nap we walked around more, had dinner and checked out a few bars before hitting the sack.
On Sunday we decided to head to the Southern Alps due to the weather situation. We crossed over at the San Bernadino pass, stopping to take some picks of the interesting vegetation and misty cloud formations. It was quite cold and windy, a big change from the warm temps below. Our next stop was a climbing crag in Bellinzona in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. Once we got down to the lower elevations the weather turned warm and sunny, quite Mediterranean.
Bellinzona is a neat town with an old fortress overlooking the city. The crag is on private land and has a bit of an amusement park feel, as they charge a small admission fee and the paths and route markings are very well taken care of. Small metal plates mark the start of the routes, also indicating the difficulty. We chose a moderate (5.7?) four pitch route to start. The rock is gneiss, which always feels a bit slick to me, and sometimes there can be pitches were all the holds tend to face the wrong direction (down!), requiring lots of body tension and smearing but this route was not too bad. It topped out on an exposed ridge of rock, giving us great views of the area. It was quite windy, though, which caused some problems. Astrid's poor face took more punishment when a raw chestnut smacked her in the cheek and eye. Before the outer shell falls off chestnuts are green and spiky, kind of like a giant gum ball from a gum ball tree. Luckily she managed to close her eyelid but had a bunch of small wounds from the spikes. The rest of the afternoon was uneventful as we did a great crack route. It was only rated 5.8 but I thought it was pretty stiff, one section requiring some strenuous laybacking. After climbing we drove to Ascona, near Locarno, on the shores of Lago Maggiore.
We did not have any hotel reservations so we spent some time checking out hotels and private rooms. After looking at one small, stuffy, smoky, expensive room we were getting a bit concerned we were going to have to shell out some serious Swiss Francs. Luckily we ended up finding a nice private room with terrace and separate bathroom. Astrid would have me interject here that the reason we had to stay in hotels or private rooms was that I forgot the tent and gas stove. I however am more the opinion that slight communication difficulties (Astrid was gone when I packed various piles of stuff) caused the minor oversight. I was on various business trips the week we left and I had all of about 2 hours to pack all my stuff and the common gear. It's actually a wonder that I remembered to pack all the stuff that I did.
In any case we found some digs, unpacked and headed to the beach. It was only a 5 minute walk to the sandy beach. The views of the green hills, the blue water, the patterns of sun and clouds combined to make a great setting. The water was refreshingly cool but quite pleasant. The sunset was awesome. We had dinner at quirky but neat terrace restaurant, kind of the Italian equivalent of a biergarten. They only had one dish on the menu but it was tasty-a beef stew with polenta. A bif tasty local cheese, dried sausage and vino rosso rounded out the meal.
The next day we ran some errands in Ascona and Locarno, getting groceries, plying the wares in clothing stores and enjoying la dolce vita in street cafes. In the afternoon we headed to the granite slabs near Ponte Brolla, a formation called the Pinocchio Slab. Astrid as usual was chomping at the bit to lead so I let her have the sharp end of the rope. She scampered up the slab with some interesting friction climbing. The granite in the Tessin is fine-grained with the occasional vein of Feldspar, which looks like quartz. Unfortunately we realized we were on the wrong route, so I had the pleasure of leading a “Wald und Wiesen Tour” a pitch full of such natural beauties as scrub pine, thorns, grass tufts, moss, all in a traverse to boot. Once on the proper route the climbing was quite fun, nice friction interspersed with the occasional steep section or crack. The pro was bomber-shiny Petzl Long Life expansion bolts. After six pitches we topped out and walked off. The weather was perfect – sunny and in the low 80's. Since started pretty late we did not get back to the car until 8 pm.
In the evening we fixed some grub at home and relaxed on the terrace, enjoying the great views of the clear, starry night sky.
The next day we did a classic 5c+ (5.9 or 10a?) nine pitch route (Quarzo) in Ponte Brolla. It was a great climb – fun friction moves, one pitch of steep climbing on flakes and cracks, good pro. I did wonder a few times however, when the easiest (and most often climbed route led 2 or 3 meters away from the bolt. A few times I just skipped a bolt if it was awkward to clip or ended up traversing to clip. In one such situation I was trying to traverse on a greasy slab and took a small flyer. I managed to backpedal until the rope came taut, only falling about 8 ft or so. Not too bad… after resorting my thoughts and taking a different approach I soon was over the hard spot and finished the pitch. We later heard other people complaining about the bolt placements so I did not feel so bad. Near the car we checked out a neat canyon cut through the hard granite – the water-smoothed walls only a few meters apart. The rock walls were rounded sensuously by the passage of water. Amazing that even such hard stone can be shaped so dramatically by something as innocuous as water.
That evening we took a nice nighttime walk along the pier in Ascona, taking plenty of pictures of the moon over the water and of the evening scenes in the narrow streets. After walking around what seemed to me to be hours (I was starving!) we finally sat down to a nice meal at an outdoor restaurant.
The next day the weather forecast was not so good we had a travel day over to the Bergell. We drove south along the lakeshore to Lugano, over the Italian border, then back up towards Maloja and the Val de Bergalia, the Bergell. We parked the car at the station for the Albignia cable car and packed our gear. We caught one of the last cars up to the massive concrete dam that forms the Albignia artificial lake. The weather had improved as we came further north and we were bathed in late afternoon sun as we made the long traverse along the dam to the hut. The evening was filled with the usual tasty evening meal, a bit of vino rosso and good conversation. Our dinner companions proved to be especially interesting-a Swiss guide and his client from the Eifel, not too far from Aachen. The client (we found out the next day his nickname was Alaska) was a hobby geologist.
Alaska and his guide were interesting dinner companions. The main topic of the evening was geology. Alaska was obviously an engineer by trade, we bantered a bit about finite element analysis and chaos theory, but he was also quite well versed in the geology of Alps and Germany. The guide also had good info about the mountains – he was a hoary old bird and had obviously done a lot of climbing and poking around. We learned the location of the only 3-way “Wasserscheide” water divide in the Alps – a small peak in the Berner Overland. A drop of water falling on the summit can either run into the Rhein, ending in the North Sea, or drop into the Danube, which terminates in the Adriatic Sea, or run in to the Aar, which terminates in the Mediterranean. The rock of the Alps is also interesting – the Bergell was formed by an intrusion of molten granite into an existing formation. The granite cooled very evenly and slowly, resulting in a rock with a very large, coarse crystalline structure.
It was also interesting to learn that most of the Eastern Alps are a thick blanket of limestone, but in a few areas this blanket has windows where granite can be seen. One such area is the Grossglockner range in Austria, with high quality granite rock, an exception in the area.
The next morning we had originally planned to do some short routes in the Klettergarten near the hut since Astrid's knee was bothering her. She had somehow injured it when we were tooling around Ascona taking photographs. Never thought that photography could be dangerous to your health, but in any case her knee was quite sore. I carried most of our group gear including both ropes up to the hut. Since the main compartment of my pack was full many things were festooned outside and hanging off like the 2.99 sale rack at the flea market. This unequal division of labor earned some good comments about women's lib from the peanut gallery seated in front of the hut.
In any case we soon changed plans since the crag we planned to go was in the shade. The elevation was around 2200m and it was quite chilly in the mornings, close to freezing. Astrid's knee was OK so we headed to the other side of the valley to the Spazzacaldera. I had done one nice route there with my buddy Torsten in 2001, this time we did a nice six pitch route a bit further left. There was a curious guide/client combination in front of us, as they saw us aiming to get on the same route the guide spurred his Spezl (client) on to get ready. No worries, we relaxed a bit then started as they reached the first belay.
They were actually pretty quick – the guide would steadily scamper up, hanging plenty of long slings in the bolts on the hard sections so the client could French free if he needed to. The client pulled out the “mano de dios” in the first five feet of the climb, grabbing the quickdraw. He did not seem to have many reservations about climbing with any particularly good style. The route (Via Lenin, 5c+) was fun, the first pitch with some tricky friction sections. I got to lead the second pitch with one aid move to get over a blank overhanging section.
The rest of the route was quite nice, mostly face and friction climbing, with a few small roofs. The rock was incredibly rough, like 20 grit sandpaper (if such something exists).
We topped out on a small peak after six pitches and took stock in things: knee was OK, weather was great, time was not late, and we felt good so we kept climbing. A ridge led up the summit of the massiv. We did not have a topo but there were a few bolts and the climbing looked easy. It was indeed easy, maybe 5.4 to 5.6, with a bit of lichen in some spots but otherwise quite enjoyable and exposed. Once in awhile we found a bolt but most of the pro and all of the belay anchors were “do it yourself”. It was no problem to find good placements for cams, nuts and especially slung horns. After four full 50m pitches (we were using two 8.8mm ropes) we topped out. Astrid traversed on belay over the trail leading to the Fiamma, our next objective.
The Fiamma is a narrow fin of rock sitting on the ridge near the summit of the Spazzacaldera. Looking perpendicular to the ridge it appeared to be a steep but fairly massive formation. Looking down the ridge it is an unusually thin flake of rock, 25m above the ridge on one side, dropping off 50m on the other side. There is only a narrow grass ledge then the face drops off steeply on both sides. It looked quite exposed and it looked like it would be pretty wild climb to get up. We were pretty tired, it had been a long day and I had also managed to leave our food stash in my pack at the base of the climb. We had a small daypack and a half liter of water but nothing else. I was half hoping that Astrid would be hot to take the sharp end of the rope as usual (normally I have to tie her down so she'll let me lead once in awhile) but I was dismayed to hear her say “Ok Gabe, now it's your turn…”. Unfortunately she was technically right, as she had led the last traversing pitch. Oh well… I packed my barking dogs into my climbing shoes, tied in and headed up.
The climbing was actually quite fun. A traverse led me up to the narrow edge of the Fiamma. I clipped a few bolts and moved left onto the arête proper. Lower down it was not so narrow, after a tricky move to get over a small bulge I had a good place to smear the feet. The next bolt was up and to the right, with some delicate friction climbing required to reach it. The summit was only 6 meters away, the ridge had now narrowed down to a fairly sharp cornered edge that was great for laybacking. I decided to fire up the edge, using some counterpressure and smearing the feet, then moving more into a rising hand traverse to the summit. There was no pro but the edge was bomber, only about four inches wide with sharp corners, great for laybacking. I soon reached the anchor bolts and clipped the anchor sling around the summit.
The summit was the most exposed place I have ever been – a fin of rock only a foot wide or so, four feet long. I straddled the ridge just below the summit, one leg on each side as I belayed Astrid up. The views were fantastic, though it was getting late so I soon lowered Astrid off and tore down the belay. I checked my rappel setup about five times before hanging my butt over the abyss and rapping off the miniature summit into an overhanging rappel.
I met Astrid on the trail and we coiled up the ropes. The descent led us back up to the summit, then traversed back to the side where we came up, descending a steep gully to the base. There ere some sections of steep downclimbing but nothing difficult. We moved quickly, noting the golden rays of the late afternoon sun. We hoofed it back to the hut, arriving just as dinner started at 6:30 pm. It was a great climb-it was a joy to move in the vertical environment and take in the mountain scenery.
The next day we planned to head back to Stuttgart so we picked a shorter route (Via Classica, 5c+) on the Biopfeiler, a neat formation behind the hut. It turned out to be a fantastic six pitch route, with every pitch being the Alpine equivalent of “Yodeling Moves”. The combination of great splitter cracks, giant sharp-edged flakes, small roofs, consistent difficulty and great quality rock was just perfect. There were few bolts but the myriad of cracks ate up Friends and nuts, the pro was bomber. After short respite on the summit we motored back to the hut.
In the morning on the approach to the climb I had noticed a number of earthen burrows. I suspected that these might belong to our favorite mountain rodent and indeed, as we cruised back we heard high pitched whistles emitting from a Marmot sentry overlooking the hill. He warned his buddies that two ungainly bipeds were coming and they all dived back into their holes. The rotund mammals seem somehow cheery; must be the miniature teddy-bear look.
After a quick stop at the hut to pack gear we bombed down the trail to the cable car and civilization. It was a great few days in the Bergell, way too short but I'm sure we will head back for more great granite routes.
The drive back to Stuttgart was uneventful except for a bit of Ruckreiseverkehr (return traffic) near Bregenz. We first had planned to go on country highways around Lake Constance but the traffic was horrible, so we reversed and got on the highway, purchasing a vignette for Austria.
In Stuttgart we enjoyed a pleasant dinner, good wine and great conversation with my friends Alfred and Verena. Nice to have a place to stay and people to see down there. After a relaxed breakfast we headed back to Aachen, hitting a bit of traffic also due to people returning from vacation. Since the school holidays for a state all occur at the same time there can be traffic chaos at the beginning and end of the 6-week school holidays. This year multiple states had holidays on the same date, intensifying the problem. Back in Aachen we did chores and got ready for the work week. It was nice to be back home but I already missed the mountains – one week seemed just too short. I really enjoyed the alpine rock and can't wait to get back for some longer routes… All in all it was a great week in the mountains.
Finis
