(aus dem 
Heft 2/2003:)
Piz Palu Überschreitung, October 2002
There was a holiday in Germany (Tag der Deutschen Einheit) and I drove to Reutte in Austria to meet my buddy Hansgeorg. Since it was a long weekend the traffic was pretty horrible so it took 4 hrs instead of two hours to get there. We threw everything in HG's car and headed down to the Bernina alpen, near St. Moritz, Switzerland. We arrived late, just before six and headed up to the Diavolezza hut in the twilight. One can also take a cablecar to shorten the 2.5 hr, 900 vertical meter approach hike but we missed the last ride by half an hour. It was a beautiful, clear evening with great views of the brown, 2000m peaks and snow-capped mountains off in the distance. We stumbled through the dark the last half hour, enjoying the clear night sky and beautiful starry night sky. Luckily we were still able to get some food – the simple spaghetti bolognese tasted heavenly.
The next morning we planned to do an interesting warm-up climb of a 3680m peak. For some reason I had hardly slept at all and felt pretty out of sorts as we rolled out of the hut at 5 am. After a hilly (both up and down) approach through rock fields we reached the glacier and roped up. It was pretty crisp and clear, though not unbearably cold. After a bit of traversing the glacier and a short snow climb we reached the beginning of the route, a nice mixed snow and rock ridge. It took a bit of weaving amongst old glacier crevasses to gain the ridge, the first part was an unpleasant, steep, snow-covered talus field. This finally gave way to a nice, steep snow ridge. The climbing was fun, with good views after a very scenic sunrise. I felt pretty weak, however, and after climbing up to about 3450m or so, with more steep snow climbing and scrambing ahead I expressed my doubts about continuing. Hansgeorg was noticing the altitude a bit so he was not too disappointed to We looked around a bit more to see if we could traverse across the face of the peak to a neat rock ridge that we originally planned as our descent route, but deep, unconsolidated snow and some potentially dangerous avalanche slopes barred the way. Instead we made our way back down the snow ridge and re-traced our steps. Back at the hut we relaxed, ate a good lunch and had a heavenly afternoon nap.
The next morning was similar, after a quick breakfast we headed out into the pre-dawn darkness, picking our way back to the glacier. The weather was similar, clear, cold, but quite pleasant. The path this time led past our warm-up peak, up a crevasse-laced glacier to a saddle just west of the Piz Palu. There was a short section of glacier that was quite broken, making for some wild views of gaping crevasses, narrow snow bridges and interesting routefinding. There had been lots of new snow the week before we arrived, the path was partly broken but we still had to break trail. As soon as you stepped off the broken trail you would sink up to the knees in soft snow. At the saddle we enjoyed the views of the backside of the mountain and other glaciers and took a short break.
Piz Palu is a very picturesque mountain, with three distinct summits and three very scenic ridges leading from the summits down to the glacier. Our route climbed up some steep snow slopes to a narrow snow ridge that led to the east summit. The climbing was airy but felt secure, most of the time the trail strayed off the summit ridge to avoid cornices, allowing you to jab an ice axe in for a self belay. The traverse from the east summit to the main summit was even more exposed, one section was only about a foot wide, with steep snow slopes dropping away on both sides. It truly felt like a “Kirchdach” or the roof of a church. The climbing demanded lots of concentration but we were soon over the worst part and standing on the main summit.
We continued on the ridge to the west summit, it turned into a mix of rock scrambling and snow climbing, still quite exposed but quite enjoyable. The hardest climbing moves were UIAA II, we rappelled down one short rock step since the snow dusting made the rock climbing a bit trickier. At the col we slogged down some snow slopes before reaching the rocky ridge that descended down all the way to the hard, rocky surface of the old glacier. Plenty of rock scrambling, the occasional rappel and snow climbing kept things interesting. The fresh snow on the rocks slowed us down, the day dragged on as we descended steadily. We finally reached the hard, icy surface of the rock-laced glacier around 4pm. The last cable car to the valley left at 4:30, we resigned ourselves to slogging back down on foot as we traversed the hard surface of the glacier to the moraine. Unfortunately when one does the traverse from east to west, as we did, you have to climb almost 300 vertical meters over the glacier moraines and talus fields back up to the hut. Despite having been climbing for almost twelve hours we both felt pretty good as we slogged back up to the hut. It was a great climb – awesome scenery, challenging, technically interesting and a good mix of rock scrambling and snow climbing.
After a snack on the sunny terrace and a tasty hot chocolate we packed up our stuff and hit the trail down to the car. The weather forecast was poor for Sunday so we had decided to head back Saturday night. The warm rays of the afternoon sun illuminated the peaks in a special light, the pinks and reds in the sky faded to a light blue as darkness fell. The walk down seemed to take way longer than the hike up but we finally reached the car at about seven pm.
Luckily traffic was pretty light as we cruised back to Reutte, then parted ways, me heading for Stuttgart and HG heading for Munich. It was a great climb to finish off the mountaineering season for the year.
Gabe Williams
