Eiger North Face

"There can be few alpinists who have not day-dreamed of climbing the North wall of the Eiger." - Les Swindin starts the description of the North Face in the Alpine club's guide for Bernese Oberland. 

Matterhorn North Face

Matterhorn is quite a spectacular mountain. It is definitely nice to look at, but climbing it is more like fighting with a pile of rubble. Well, at least most years (See here, for example). This year was different. Due to wet summer, there was plenty of ice everywhere. And the classic north face has formed into an enjoyable ice climb. With the excellent weather forecast for the weekend we had to get on it.

North-East face of Lyskamm

"No sense packing a stove you can't light" Mark Twight

So we learned...

Dehydrated. Still happy.

Frieder, Saule and me were camped at the base of the Lyskamm north face after a long approach from Rotenboden. The face above looked really nice and the Matterhorn in the west made the view even better. The only problem was that our stove was not working.

Miyar valley, Himachal Pradesh

Upper Takdung glacier in Miyar valley. Lotus and Neverseen towers.

Always inspired by the Himalayan stories, I finally had a chance to visit them this August to September. We had an amazing gang with the strong youth Cyrill, the wise man Elias, the wild cowboy Aras and myself for some comedy value. Even though the weather didn't play along, we still had some great climbing days with jokes flowing in spades and good time guaranteed. 

Sea Cliffs of Pembroke

I am stuck in Heathrow airport, already gave up the hopes to reach Zurich, but still have my fingers crossed for a flight to Geneva tonight. Oh well, a good chance to write a few lines about the last couple of days.

Baltics go Bernina

When Dan said that they are touring Europe, climbing mountains, drinking wine and they are about to stop in Zurich, Saule and I joined them for the weekend with a holiday feel.

Piz Bernina. Biancograt is the right skyline

Grand Capucin

With an amazing weather forecast for the weekend, Saule and I packed our bags to take a train all the way to Cham. Just before leaving, however, we got an offer from Franz and Frieder to join them in the car. Needless to say, we were looking forward to the banter with the boys and the roadtrip southwest ensued.

Rise and shine!

Bockmattli

Ever since spotting the pretty rock face of Bockmattli during one of my bike rides round Zurisee, I was eager to check it out from closer. It turned out to be a really worthwhile cliff, almost a local small-big-wall. Fabio and I did the classic Direkte Nordwand.

The route goes just to the left of the huge corner on the main face

Alpsteinmarathon

With just one free day before experiments in Saclay, Saule and I decided to check out the Alpstein in Appenzell. Since we always struggle with the route choices, we just went for the longest one - Alpsteinmarathon (topo) - 800 meters up to 6b+ lead to the top of Hundstein.

Saule high up on the route.

Pumped at Schillingsflue

Cyrill and I had an endurance session on Sunday at Schillingsflue. It is pretty awesome being spat off the route not because of difficulty, but rather the accumulation of lactic acid in the body. Need to work on that. In terms of climbing, I managed to struggle up Eunuch, a 7a+ and then took a few falls off the last move of Heiris Direkt, a rather nice 7b.

Idyllic views on the drive in.

Cyrill getting pumped on HD.

Alhambra

Another quick visit to Ticino, this time taking a train and hoping that the new tunnel would be finished sooner. A bunch of us went to the most crowded crag in Switzerland - Ponte Brolla and got a few pitches in. Also, in two parties we climbed a longer route across the valley, called Alhambra.

Frieder halfway up Alhambra

Laura wrote a clearly better report of their fun with Martynas.

Sobrio

We left Zurich on a gloomy morning with a fully squeezed mobility car. The plan, as usual, was to seek some sun and dry rock. The legend goes that if one crosses the Magic Gotthard Tunnel, on the other end a sunny-Italian-speaking land awaits the weary northerner.

We did just that and had some pretty good climbing in the sun in a crag next to a Sobrio village.

The gang.

Povilas on a 7a.

Cyrill sending a 7b.

First 4k of the year

With the weather everywhere in the alps looking moody, there was a half-day good weather promised in Valais. Frieder came up with a plan to tag Castor from the lift of Klein Matterhorn and this worked out nicely - nice views, fun climb up and good snow on the way down.

something for next time

The snow machine

Up

Rather nice ridge

Gipfel

On the way out

Spring break

View from our breakfast table

And from our lunch table

Winter

Despite the poor season start, we managed to get up a few fun climbs. Among more interesting was a climb up Hoch Ducan, as well as the finally climbed left-hand candle in Sertig. The Crack baby was also heaps of fun.





 In order not to lose all of the suntan, we paid a quick visit to Turkey for some sport-climbing in the sun.

Let's see if it works

I'll try to post something every now and then. Let's see if it works. KM

Here are some 'blast from the past' blogs:
http://big-walls.blogspot.com/
https://www.15min.lt/tema/montis-magia-49523