Adventures on granite of all sizes - part 2 (L-XXL)

In the last blog I covered our climbs on small to mediumly sized things, mostly in Valle dell'Orco. Climbing in Orco was great fun in its own right, and we're both really psyched for a return trip at some point. The ulterior motive though was to prepare for some much bigger granite ascents in the French and Swiss Alps this summer.

Ultimately, the terrible mountain weather scuppered most of our plans - according to several people we've spoken to, this has been the worst Alpine summer for a very long time. We've seen Facebook updates from friends who live in Chamonix contemplating moving back to the UK, and we know of several other people who have cancelled planned holidays to the Alps and gone sport climbing instead. Last week, we'd planned to meet up with some friends in the Dolomites, but the forecast looked so bad that they drove all the way up to meet us in the Frankenjura instead (for more information see Andy's blog - as I was typing that sentence he announced that he has already finished writing a post about it - aargh!)

So that's our excuse for only managing to do one big route this summer. We picked a good one though...

The big

Motorhead

Motorhead is a classic 14 pitch route on Eldorado, a massive sheet of granite rising out of Grimselsee. This route was on both of our 'to do' lists so we were both really pleased when a few days of good weather in the middle of July gave us a chance to go for it. The climbing is a mixture of pure friction slabs and layback cracks. We'd been expecting to be able to put our Orco crack climbing practice to good use, but actually most of the cracks turned out to be flaring and hard to jam in, making the climbing a lot more strenuous than we expected. The views down the route to the lake below were awesome - just smooth sheets of granite as far as you could see. There is one particular photo that everyone who climbs Motorhead seems to take, looking down the crack on pitch 6 (I think?) - we took it too!




Friction slab climbing on glacier-polished granite is not something that I'm used to. It requires a lot of confidence to keep moving upwards with no real handholds or footholds, just trusting in the friction of your shoes on the rock. I was quite glad that I wasn't the one leading. It's also quite hard on the feet - by the end we were having to stop and take our shoes off after nearly every pitch. My advice: wear loose, comfortable rock shoes for this route - it's not like there's many actual footholds to stand on anyway!

Pitch 3 - fast climbing pair waiting patiently for me to get a move on...

Encouragingly, our multipitch practice in Orco seemed to have paid off and I thought we climbed the whole thing fairly quickly and efficiently with slick changeovers between pitches. We were so efficient that I completely forgot to take photos, which is why I only have the same two photos that Andy already used. We were slightly put to shame by another British climbing pair who started the route behind us though. They let us go first because 'We haven't climbed together before' and 'I'm out of practice at rock climbing'. It turned out though that she was out of practice because she'd just got back from climbing Denali, and I heard him apologetically admit that he'd only done a few E3's this year! So although spent the first five pitches desperately seconding as fast as I physically could, every time I looked down one or the other of them would be standing a few metres below, patiently waiting for me to get a bit higher. I was quite relieved when we found a ledge after pitch five that was big enough to let them go past, from where they rapidly disappeared into the distance.

We tried to take a summit photo - it didn't work so well...

Overall, it was an awesome route and a big day out - the combination of the walk in, the route, the descent and the walk out left us very tired, but in a good way. The next day we tried to climb some more granite slabs at Räterichsbodensee, but we gave up after three pitches due to a combination of tiredness and sore feet. We came down, had lunch and went for a gentle afternoon stroll around the lake instead. With hindsight, if we'd known that this was to be our last window of good weather we might have made more of an effort...

The very big (a failed attempt at...)

Salbit south ridge

Apart from Motorhead, my only defined goal for the Alps was to do a route that went to a 'proper' summit. I've never been to an Alpine summit before. On my only previous trip to the Alps two years ago we tried a route on the Aiguille du Moine, but abandoned the attempt very early on because the climbing was harder than we expected, meaning that we couldn't move fast enough to be sure of getting up and back down safely.

We picked the south ridge of Salbit (Salbitschijen to give it its full name, but that's hard to say) as our mountain objective for the Bernese Oberland. It's not as high as many of the others in the area, measuring 2981 m, but it is a very definite peak - the last pitch of the route climbs up a huge pointy flake. Given the dodgy weather, the low-ish height was an advantage as it meant that the approach was fairly straightforward - about 3.5 hours walk up to a bivvy hut near the base of the route, with no glacier travel involved. After Motorhead, we spent about a week hanging around in the rain, but then the forecast suggested that a three day weather window was coming up so we decided to walk up and have a go.

What is this..?

Cake...?!

We arrived at the parking area in perfect sunshine, and began the gear faff. We were planning to spend two nights up in the hills (one afternoon to walk in, one day to do the south ridge, one day to do another, shorter route and walk down), so we needed to carry food, cooking equipment and sleeping bags as well as all our climbing gear. Unhelpfully, some of the local cows got a bit curious about what we were up to. They seemed to be particularly interested in our pile of food - I didn't know cows liked marble cake! This slowed down our packing a bit - one of us had to find things in the van while the other stood guard to make sure the cows didn't steal or trample our stuff. I'm not sure exactly how I would have stopped a gigantic cow with massive horns from doing that, so I was quite glad when they got bored and wandered off.

Into the unknown...

The first part of the walk (up to the main Salbithütte) was hot and sweaty, but otherwise fairly pleasant. On the second part (crossing from the main hut to the bivvy hut), the mist suddenly rolled in and visibility dropped dramatically - we were glad of the very dense path markings. We were a bit confused when we came across a large, suspended bridge that wasn't marked on our map or mentioned in the guidebook. Walking across it into the mist without being able to see the other side was quite atmospheric. The bivvy hut is a small metal box, a bit like a shipping container, perched inconspicuously among some boulders on the hillside - it took us a while to find it in the mist. From the outside it doesn't look like much, but it's quite cosy inside, with two rows of beds, a table and benches and a tiny kitchen unit.

The next morning we woke up at 6am, ate an entire marble cake between us for breakfast (for energy!) and set off for the start of the route (back across the bridge, about a 20 min walk from the hut). It was disturbingly cloudy, but we were hopeful that it would lift by the time we got to the route and we'd get the patchy sun that the weather forecast had promised. As we walked, we heard a few faint rumbles that sounded a bit like thunder, but we optimistically convinced ourselves that it was just the wind. By the time we reached the base of the route though there was definitely water falling out of the sky and we couldn't ignore it any more. Disappointed, we turned round and headed back to the hut in a downpour that got steadily heavier - we were soaked by the time we made it back.

The bivvy hut, and the "view"

We had phones with us, so we spent the rest of the morning in the bivvy hut (which got quite full at one point with other similarly damp climbers) trying to get hold of weather forecasts from various sources. The overall consensus was that the forecast had changed and our three-day window had vanished and been replaced by near-continuous rain. Our chances of getting on the route the next day looked remote, so we waited for a gap in the rain and walked back down. The weather brightened up considerably as we got near to the valley floor, and we passed some people heading upwards carrying ropes and helmets, which was confusing behaviour given the forecasts we'd seen. So when we reached the van we checked the forecast again - in the three hours it took us to walk down it had changed again and was now predicting sun for the following day! We briefly thought about walking back up again, but decided we couldn't face it. In the end, it rained heavily in the afternoon of the next day, so this was probably the right decision...


Overall score: Alps 2, Ali 0. Next time...

Gelmersee - we went here one rare morning when it wasn't raining

The even bigger (for the future...)

Salbit West Ridge

Although I'm keen to go back for the South Ridge, I think I have also acquired a bigger goal for the future. The West ridge of Salbit is like the South ridge, but more so - it's both longer and harder at a total of 36 pitches and an overall grade of 6b (alpine ED). Some friends of ours from the NLMC, who are much fitter, better and faster than us, did the whole thing in one (very long) day during the good weather window when we did Motorhead. Many (most?) people do it as a two day expedition instead and spend a night at a popular bivvy spot in a notch between two ridge towers affectionately known as 'Hotel Salbit'. Either way, I'm going to have to get a LOT fitter - essentially we'd have to be able to climb the equivalent of 1.3 Motorheads on the first day, and then be able to get up the next morning and do it all again. After climbing the actual Motorhead we were basically broken the whole of the next day - definite work needed...

The start of the West Ridge - I think it would look better if it wasn't wet...

The bivvy hut is located about five minutes walk from the base of the route, so we caught a glimpse of the start of it from the window when the mist cleared. It looks pretty intimidating but inspiring too...