Scorching hot weather. A good opportunity to climb a wall with a northerly aspect. Andrey and I chose the "Direkte Nordwand" up the large Bockmattli tower. A classic route in the bomb proof limestone that is typical for the area. We park the car at the shore of Wägitalersee. Even though it's still early in the morning most parking spots on the narrow road are already taken. Our guess is that half of the early risers will be climbers while the others are anglers, boating around on the lake.
It takes us not even 50 minutes to hike up the first 600 meters and start scrambling around the base of the huge face in search of the start of our route. We rope up and start climbing around 9 in the morning. The first pitch is short and a bit weird: It starts off with a somewhat powerful bouldering move (5c+) before traversing a bit towards a rappel/lowering down section. The following two pitches are similar - easy climbing and mostly moving sideways rather than up. We're basically still moving into position at the base of the face. It's obvious why you'd want to do this here instead of walking on the grass below - the face is overhanging between us and the ground.
Just when we are finally about to start the route proper, a helicopter circles into view and proceeds to land close by. It's Rega, the Swiss rescue service, picking someone up. Luckily this time not us. Still makes me feel a bit queasy whenever I see that chopper.
We can see another party of two a few pitches ahead of us. We seem to be moving much faster than they are, so we expect to catch up with them. This should turn out to be a misconception. While we are indeed moving fast and efficiently we grind to a halt when Andrey sets out to lead the crux pitch. A long and sustained 6a+ that takes him nearly 50 minutes to conquer. I get to lead a short but super powerful 6a pitch after that. It traverses under a roof and requires pulling hard on underclings to keep enough pressure on your feet. Neither one of us manages a perfectly clean on-sight and we need to rest on the rope and step on a bolt. Oh well.
Once through the crux pitches it's cruising time all the way up to the summit which we gain at 3pm after just shy of 6 hours of climbing. We don't waste much time as we've been warned that the descent is not to be underestimated. And indeed it turns out that it involves a bunch of rappels and exposed scrambling over a series of small towers before climbing another two (easy) pitches up to the grassy slopes of the Bockmattli. We finally arrive back at the car at around 7pm.
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