BuschnicK

Brüggler (1777m) climbing the 200m south wall

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Wed, 30 May 2012 19:06:00 +0000

We went for two whole days of climbing this (long) weekend. On Sunday Björn, Håvard and me rented a car and went to the Brüggler. We climbed the "Spreizrinne". Multiple pitches of fine limestone. Our topo rates it at 6a+ (UIAA VII-) but stops just below the summit tower. Of course we had to go all the way and discovered that the final pitch was by far the most difficult. Wet undercut holds in partly overhanging terrain. I led it but didn't manage to climb it clean. I needed several rests, hanging in the ropes and even cheating by using a bolt as a foothold. The others didn't fare much better and used additional aids. We rechristened the top part of the route "crazy ass pitch from hell" which was followed by the "insaaaaaanely exposed ridge".

The objective

Håvard

Björn

Sören

View

Summit!

On Monday Andrey, Håvard, Ian and me went to the same wall again. This time we climbed "Sonntagsweg". 7 pitches with the crux at the very end, rated 6b (UIAA VII). I managed to climb everything clean this time. A bit painful since the limestome is razor sharp in places and my big toe was sticking out of my worn and torn climbing shoes (already ordered two new pairs and a lot more gear ;-)). The others chose an alternate route to avoid the hard bit at the top. We had a scary moment when Andrey was leading the second but last pitch. I was belaying him and he had just climbed into a very easy walking section out of sight from me when I suddenly felt a lot of slack on the ropes followed by a surprised scream and a head sized boulder crashing down the couloir two meters away from me. Andrey had slipped and fallen head first down the slope. Fortunately no one got hurt. Again we felt the need to improve on the names: "impossible one finger pull" and "canyon of painful death".

A very successful, very fun and very international expedition (Norway, Sweden, Scotland, Russia, Germany).

Håvard in action

Ian

Andrey

The long Rappel back down (you can just make out our backpacks to the right)

Säntis attempt and long weekend continued...

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:08:00 +0000

After Volker and Anita arrived from Germany on Thursday we went for a short hike over Uetli on Friday to have some food at the Google office and spend the rest of the day in the spa. The spa occupies a building that used to be the Hürlimann brewery. Thus it features an interesting architecture with the hot tubs placed in underground dungeons where the beer kegs used to be. It also sports a huge pool on the roof with a fantastic view over the city of Zürich.

We went to see the Avengers in 3D afterwards. Pretty unremarkable and boring movie. I just wanted to give 3D another chance, seeing what all the hype is about and updating my dated experience with it. Didn't convince me at all. I found it blurry and inconsistent. Didn't add to my enjoyment at all. Ah well. Maybe we just have to learn how to use the medium properly yet?

On Saturday Volker and me set out to climb Säntis. Anita stayed home sick (3D motion sickness? };-> ). We made good progress for the first 10km or so up until around 1700m. The snow cover got really thick at that point. We were actually sitting on the roof ridge of a building having a rest. Still we pushed on. The sun was scorching hot and walking on snow felt like being under a magnifying glass or walking in a parabolic mirror. The snow was correspondingly bad: wet slush that got worse and worse the more the day progressed. Despite using our snow shoes, ice ax and walking poles as best we could, progress was slow and dangerous. We crossed some avalanche areas and triggered some smaller snow balls ourselves. It was really tricky not to slide down the steep slope and go over the cliffs at the end. We did actually fall and slide a couple of times but managed to stop after some meters every time. Just minutes after we witnessed a spontaneous and quite big rock slide on the opposing mountain face a boulder the size of two human heads crashed into the snow a mere two meters in front of me. Maybe we weren't really supposed to be here. Early afternoon, from an altitude of 2080m we decided to call it quits and turn around. Descending was even more tricky than going up, but we made it back down to safety. Beautiful day and fun tour - although pushing on would have been suicidal. 23km, 1300m.

We went climbing in the gym on Sunday. Volker flashed a 7a which I repeated and we solved some tricky/interesting/fun boulder problems. I think Anita might have enjoyed the slack line more than the climbing ;-)

Fun times.

Others have come before us and failed.

Rigi Marsch 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 20 May 2012 20:15:00 +0000

A colleague of mine, Felix, suggested we should participate in this year's Rigi Marsch. A hike through the night (start is around 1930) over 50km and 1600m up to Rigi Kulm. It is organized by the Rigi91 club which provides a nicely marked trail (candles!), provisioning stations and first aid and safety services for around a thousand participants. The weather forecast predicted rain and snow down to 900m, despite this being May. Fortunately, it turned out to be wrong. We did have some short rain showers and the coldest 16th of May in 30 years, but the weather was generally beautiful and perfect for a hike like this.

Five of us, Felix, Dominik, Jonas, Konstantin and me set out for the hike directly after work. Spirits were high and we were merrily marching along in a huge queue of people following dirt tracks along the Reuss river. Over time the queue would thin and stretch out over a longer and longer distance. While Dominik and Jonas were charging ahead as a close team from previous desert hiking and joint holiday adventures, Felix, Konstantin and me were strolling at a more leisurely pace. We'd meet up at the checkpoints later.

It's funny how psychology works. The first time I could get a glimpse of our destination, a flashing antenna tower on the top of Mount Rigi, it was so far away, the concept of walking all the way there seemed abstract and non-threatening. When I could see it the next time, 20km later, and it still didn't seem any closer it was a bit discouraging.

At the fourth checkpoint, sometime around 5 in the morning, after walking a Marathon distance of 42km with only 3 short breaks of 10 minutes each and just before starting the ascent proper, Felix and Konstantin gave up and went home. They had self sabotaged in a way and were now experiencing the consequences. Konstantin showed up in a leather jacket and regular leather office slippers. He had not only ruined his shoes by now but also discovered that they are quite unsuitable for a trip like this. Felix on the other hand had bought Diablo3 on launch day a couple of days earlier and hadn't slept properly in a while because of that.

While I had been relatively slow on flat terrain, finally reaching the mountain activated me. I had been seeing Felix and Konstantin off at the checkpoint while Dominik and Jonas went ahead in order to stay warm. I set out to catch up with them and charged past dozens of other tired hikers. I had recovered a bit from the sleepless night, the sun was dawning, providing beautiful vistas and I had found my rhythm on the ascent. Caught up with Dominik and Jonas but kept going and went right past them, waiting for them to arrive at the final checkpoint before the summit. It was here that Jonas had to give up due to another case of self sabotage. His cardiovascular system (Kreislauf?) was giving him trouble because he donated blood a mere two days ago. Not a good idea before an endurance sports event!

So Dominik and me climbed the last couple of kilometers (and height meters!) together. Enjoying fantastic vistas and scenery and trying not to slip and slide too much on the frozen snow trail. We reach the summit around 0715 in morning. A little bit of waiting and the 8 o'clock special cog train gets us back down. Arriving back home I have only very few hours of rest before Anita and Volker come for a visit and a weekend of adventure, but that's for another post...

Tired? Me? Why no, not at all!

Dominik

Full map of the trip. Note that my gps app split it into two sections, we did reach the summit you just have to page through to it ;-) http://g.co/maps/hnr5k

Sunday hike: Adliswil to Zug via Albis

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:09:00 +0000

We had a pretty fun day of rafting on Saturday. Tim's stag party. It was raining continuously, so unfortunately we weren't allowed to go on the river we originally planned for (apparently they let too much water through the dam, upping the whitewater grade beyond what's allowed for commercial tours. All my begging didn't help ;-/ ). So we went on a more tame river rated at 2-3. High water made it interesting nevertheless - we had whole trees floating by and had to watch out continuously for low hanging branches over and into the water. Fun. Continued with a BBQ and lots of booze at Tim's place. Got home around 5 in the morning, just before sunrise.

I was pretty hung over on Sunday and got up late. Since Mama Google is feeding us well during the week I didn't have any food in the house. Slaughtered a chocolate Easter bunny for breakfast and went for a walk up Albis. The ridge looked nice, so I kept going. Motivating music on my ears, clouds, but no rain, I got into the rhythm of the hike. Saw a lake on the horizon and headed for it. Turned out to be lake Zug. So I kept walking for 30.54km climbing a total of 870m. Arrived in Zug just in time with the fast train back to Zürich, buying my ticket via the phone while boarding. Pretty cool day and I think I've worked off my hang over ;-)

Photos.

2012/05/13 14:14 auf einer größeren Karte anzeigen

Rheinwaldhorn (3402m) pre-season attempt

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:11:00 +0000

What do you do when the weather service issues a "severe weather" warning, the national avalanche bulletin marks the area for "significant risk of avalanches" and the shelters are still closed for the winter? Why, you go for a mountain hike of course! Sad really, here I am, sitting in the office all week while we have perfect sunny weather outside, waiting for the weekend with an abysmal weather forecast. The opportunity costs of selling lifetime.

Anyways, I aim for the Rheinwaldhorn, at 3402m the highest mountain in Tessin. This implies a long train ride through the whole of Switzerland but I'm hoping that the south side of the alps will have less snow than the north. Getting to my starting point, the little village of Dangio, causes some confusion. The bus is late by several minutes and by the time we should be at my stop we are at a village called Dongio (not Dangio!). Luckily I don't get off and reach the start as intended.

The bus being late is very unusual and must be due to this being the Italian side of Switzerland. The Swiss take pride in being very punctual indeed. A colleague of mine got on a train at the Italian/Swiss border, heading home for Zürich. The train wasn't leaving for a long time and he asked the conductor about it. The conductor explained that there are actually two trains servicing the exact same route, leaving only minutes apart. The first will be on time while the second waits around for the Italian connecting trains which are notoriously late. My colleague accidentally boarded the "wait for Italy" train.

It was raining in Zürich when I left, it is raining in Dangio when I arrive. The valley is quite beautiful from the little I can see when the clouds give me an opening. The trail is very nice, with a nice constant grade, perfect for finding your rhythm. Some fallen trees across it indicate that it hasn't yet been maintained and opened for the year. The rain doesn't stop until it turns to snow instead.

I arrive at the Adula CAS hut at 2012m, having started at 800m. It is not yet open for business, but all huts maintained by the Swiss Alpine Club allow for winter access and thus the door is open. It's tidy, damp and cozy at 5°C. I brought my stove and cook dinner consisting of pasta, pesto and chocolate as desert. Since I'm the only one here since early March (according to the log book) and will be alone tonight, I take the liberty of moving into the only single bed room, normally reserved for mountain guides, and go to sleep.

Although I originally planned for an early departure for the summit I changed plans and get up and out only at sunrise around 5:30. Reason being that it is so foggy and I don't know the route I want at least some light to try and orient myself. There has been close to a foot of fresh snow during the night and it is still snowing. I don my snowshoes and set out.

Climbing a steep slope turns into quite a struggle. The snow is wet, heavy and deep. My ice ax goes in for its full length and then some. My snow shoes sink in up to my knees. I fight for every meter, sometimes clawing my way up on all fours. After a very exhausting two hours which should have been one I reach the Capanna Adula UTOE at 2393m. The hut is only accessible by its winter entrance, climbing through windows two meters above ground. All doors are blocked by snow.

I assess my situation: Visibility is still shit; I'm on an unknown route with all signposts dismantled for the winter; headed for the Canton's largest glacier with its crevasses covered by fresh snow; against my hopes getting higher didn't give me a frozen surface but still a snow plow situation; weather forecast is abysmal; it's already late in the day and I still have to get back. In addition to that I can hear the mountains all around me rumbling and growling. While I originally tried to convince myself that it's just the echo of airplane jet engines I could since witness several large avalanches crashing down the faces when I could get a glimpse through the clouds. Long story short: turn around time.

Heading back I need my snowshoes almost down to 1500m. 500m more than the day before, my old tracks are almost entirely gone by now. The rest of the way down it is raining heavily. While this sounds bad it is not a lie when I say I am actually enjoying it. Waterproof boots and gators, I create my own little micro climate under my rain poncho and listen to the drumming of the rain drops on my hat. A steady rhythm and walking pace and it's almost meditative, sending my mind on a voyage.

Some shepherds, tending to their goats, offer to drive me down the rest of the way. I happily decline and continue my way. Unfortunately I have to wait for an hour for the next bus, but then I'm on my way and in my soaking hot bath tub ;-)

Gufelstock attempt

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Thinking I could start the hiking season early this year I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and took the train to Engi. The weather forecast was nothing to get excited about: cloudy with periods of rain. Turned out to be true, except that the rain came in the form of big and sticky snow flakes once I passed 1500m altitude. Initial progress was good and I was well on track to beat the posted time of 4.75 hours to the summit. It should not be. The snow cover on the ground got deeper and deeper and was of a very treacherous kind: wet and heavy on an icy surface. That makes for a very slippery combination and I had to fight for every single step, despite using my snow shoes to good effect. On top of that I was only approximately on trail and finding my way got more and more difficult and dangerous. While I could follow a single line of footprints in the snow initially their creator bailed after the first hut, leaving me with virgin snow cover and no trail markers. While there are usually trail markers on the trees and even signposts at junctions this particular trail relied entirely on markers on the ground. Very useful under a meter of snow. Checking with my GPS and map I could tell that I was only mere meters besides the trail and yet couldn't see any trace of it. After some scrambling and checking the way ahead I finally decided to call it quits and turn around. Just to mock me the clouds cleared up and revealed a beautiful blue sky on my way down.

~14km, ~900m up and down, turn around point ~1750m

Gulderstock

Grüenen shelter - very nice hut. Snowing outside.

It might not look it, but that's frickin' steep and a piece of work!

The weather mocking me.

Deer

A weekend of climbing near Ponte Brolla

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:56:00 +0000

Ben, Linus, Gintare, Volodymyr, Tadek, Andrey, Hannah and me. Two days in Ponte Brolla at the Lago Maggiore. Beautiful weather, blue skies and summer feeling. People lying on the sandy beach at the river and us having Italien dinner under a starry night sky. South and west facing walls. A lot of easy slabs and friction climbing but some challenging vertical and overhanging sections as well. We started out with an 11 pitch route on Saturday. Only Volodymyr and me made it all the way to the end, the others bailed at various points. The final sections got interesting. We decided that the obvious route marked on our topo maps looked boring and I lead an unmarked one instead. Turned out to be "interesting". Very high up and quite exposed and more difficult than everything else thus far. I collected some gear from the wall of climbers who went before us and had to bail. The route included some detours and the long traverses introduced a lot of rope drag. We were running out of daylight and free soloed the final (very short and easy) pitch in order to move faster. Had to hike down a very long detour to get back to where we started. In climbing shoes! Ouch. Passed a small hut with an awesome bathtub cut into the rock high on the cliff with a beautiful view over the valley.

We spent Sunday on the main wall climbing a lot of single or short multi pitch routes. Some challenging problems in the 6a-6b difficulty range. Having little experience climbing outdoors it's still surprising to me how different it feels compared to the gym. Much more fun. Difficult for entirely different reasons than the gym.

All photos here.

A day of climbing near Stansstad

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:30:00 +0000

Andrey, Volodymyr, Hannah, Mike, Ben, Håvard and me went to Stansstad on lake Lucerne for a nice Saturday of climbing. We did mostly single pitches, some quite challenging (Volodymyr challenged me to a 6b+. I did somehow claw my way through, but not without cheating a little bit by taking a rest and a fall ;-)). I was mostly climbing with Mike who is usually my partner in the gym as well. He's far more experienced than me and a better climber. That doesn't stop him from teasing me into the same routes he climbs, causing me to pant and swear a lot. I've coined the term "Fuck you Mike! situation" as an accurate description of the kind of things he gets me into. I was complaining about my climbing shoes: I had brought two pairs, one with my toes sticking out the front and generally abused to the point of falling apart and another one that's a full size too small and painfully tight. Mike commented on my whining and mocked me into climbing a whole pitch barefoot. Not recommended on granite with sharp edges. Håvard and me ended the day with a head first rappel down, experimenting with how to build a chest harness from slings. The idea was to swing down the wall in fluid Rambo movements, blazing a fictional gun. In reality we were jerkily hopping down getting red faces from reduced blood circulation.

A very fun day indeed! All photos here.

Butziflue (1601m) and Regenegg (1531m) Snowshoe Hike

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:17:00 +0000

Anita, Ben and me went on another Snowshoe Hike on Saturday. Beautiful sunny weather. Mostly good snow conditions except for some rare slushy spots. We were breaking our own trail until we found existing tracks to follow. Turned out to be a mistake, since the three guys who left them would soon turn around because they went into a dead-end (steep drops in all directions). We had a bit of fun on a steep section with deep lose powder snow: sit down and slide!

13km, 730m up, 790m down

Weekend Snowshoe Hike

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:29:00 +0000

The goal was to summit Speer (1950m). Ben, Gintare, Linus and me. Linus and Gintare couldn't figure out their alarm clock and so Ben and me had to wait for about an hour at the trailhead in Amden. Weather was nice and sunny with no wind. Good in theory, in practice the sun turned the snow into wet and heavy slush which made progress difficult at times. And there was a lot of snow - 2m signposts were completely buried. We could see quite a few fresh avalanches and witnessed an impressively big one live. Kinda scary.

Since trailmarkers were completely invisible under the snow we had to find our own way. We followed the map and traversed a very steep northern slope covered in a hard crust of ice. Tough to negotiate and walking with your feet bent at a 45° sideways angle hurts your ankles after a while. We decided to descent into the valley and climb up again instead of continuing the traverse. Wasted a lot of time with that so we ultimately decided to forgo our summit attempt and head back instead. Turned out to be a wise choice because even so we were still hiking at dusk.

We climbed 880m, descended 1380m and covered a distance of around 15km. It was a great trip with beautiful vistas, secluded silence and fun companions (and a very international expedition to boot! USA, Finland, Lithuania and Germany ;-)).

Africa 2012: Uhuru peak, Mt Kilimanjaro (5895m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:17:00 +0000

(Continued from part II)

On to the mountain! The first contact to our guides in the hotel yard is somewhat discouraging. The lead guide, Babuu, seems distanced and just a bit too cool. His second, Mr. Mango, is very quiet so we cannot quite tell whether he actually understands a word we are saying. He’s got badly discolored teeth and a crippled hand. Both are young. We are a bit anxious and have lots of questions which only receive very superfluous answers. Fortunately initial perceptions were misleading and in the end both turned out to be exceedingly strong, competent and very friendly companions.

We are told to pack two packs, a daypack we’ll carry ourselves with no more than 10kg and a pack for the porters with no more than 15kg. Volker has a hard time staying within these limits and only calms down when he realizes that he cannot actually physically wear six jackets at the same time which he originally intended for summit day. He leaves some at the hotel ;-) Anita and I travel the most lightly with 14kg total each. I think it shows that we are the most outdoor experienced of the group and have a pretty good idea of what’s essential. The packs for the porters get stuffed into huge plastic bags which they’ll later carry on their heads. Even if you give them a perfectly fine backpack they’ll wrap it and put it on their head. Quite a funny sight to behold.

We have chosen the eight day Lemosho trek to the top. It’s the longest route, allowing for the best acclimatization and thus the best chances of success. It’s also the most scenically beautiful and less crowded route. Especially compared to the “Coca-Cola” route, which features huts for accommodation. There’s also a hard and fast “whiskey” route which is only recommended if you already arrive pre-acclimatized. We reach the trailhead at around 2000m in a special off-road military type truck with huge tires. The vehicle was sorely needed as the road up there is quite an adventure.

There’s big chaos at the official park entrance and registration point where the luggage gets weighted and distributed to the various porters. Babuu hires more freelance porters hanging around waiting for jobs. It’s a mystery to me how nothing gets lost in the shuffle, but it all turns out as it should. We end up with a support crew of 23 people: 18 porters, 3 guides, a chef and a waiter. Although we’ve been warned that we needed to hire this many and are not allowed to go without it’s still quite a crowd to behold.

We start out through rain-forest with lots of reminders to go “pole, pole”, which means slow slow. Aside from seeing some monkeys it’s beautiful but pretty uneventful. We hardly ever see our porters, a rhythm which should become the norm over the following days. We’d leave camp in the morning, the porters would deconstruct it in our absence, hurry past us during the day and set up camp again before we arrived. They must be some kind of superhuman species. Many of them clad in clothes barely a level above rags, t-shirts and shorts, naked feet in sandals but literally running up the mountain at altitudes above 4000m carrying a full 20l canister of water on their head and a backpack on their back. They also didn’t seem to eat, sleep or drink. Seriously. While we were constantly reminded to drink at least 4 litres of water every day to combat altitude sickness and stay in good health they hardly ever carried drinking bottles at all. While we slept in good expedition type tents they shared the single skinned kitchen tent made from cheap plastic canvas. Tough as nails and cheerful and friendly to boot. Unfortunately very few of them understood any English, so conversation was hard to impossible.

We do our first acclimatization detour to Shira Cathedral at 3895m. This is the first time it actually feels like mountain climbing. The trails up to this point were all gently sloped and the terrain so wide and open that it didn’t feel like being on a mountain at all. Ascending the Cathedral requires some mild scrambling and sure foot placements. We get rewarded with beautiful views to Mount Meru, the Moshi plains and the west face of Mount Kilimanjaro. We cross the last point accessible via road between Shira 1 and Shira 2 camps. The road is used exclusively for rescue missions and indeed we witness two cars in the distance transporting people down (as we assume/are told). Nights get cold with below freezing temperatures. It’s at this point that Alex discovers he’s bought a sleeping bag for summer ;-)

The next acclimatization tour leads us to the Lava Tower, a 4560m high needle of rock. It’s the first day the altitude is starting to have an effect and some of us suffer from head aches. It’s the first and only time on the mountain I take an aspirin against the pain. Our next camps will all hover around the 4000m line, which, believe it or not, in these degrees of latitude is also where vegetation stops. We are traversing around the mountain. Doing so we converge with several of the more popular routes and it starts getting crowded. There must be hundreds of tourists on the mountain at any given moment. This implies at least 3-4 support personnel per tourist and thus thousands of people. Leaving Barranco camp at 3950m climbing the “breakfast wall”, a steep section of rock that acts as a natural choke point, looks like an ant trail of porters and climbers.

We arrive at Barafu camp at 4600m. This is our final camp, we will wake up at 23:15 in the evening to start our summit attempt. Weather thus far has been perfect with a stable rhythm of clear nights with a full moon followed by a bright and cloudless sky until the afternoon when the moisture would rise and form some cloud cover. No rain, no high winds. At this altitude we aren’t really expected to sleep. Oxygen content is at about 60% sea level and you notice it in everything you do. Get up too fast, get a headache. Walk a couple of fast steps, become short of breadth. Lie down to sleep and relax and feel your heart racing and your lungs labouring much harder than usual. Four of us head out and up for another acclimatization climb of 200m before going to bed. We visit the deserted Kosovo camp (it’s not being used any more because of high winds).

Insane fact: For Barafu camp the last source of water is 800m lower. This means porters are constantly running up and down fetching water for cooking/washing/drinking. You just have to admire these guys (and two girls! from all the porters we saw we’ve met only two females).

Go! Everybody dons pretty much every layer of clothes available and we head out. First in the light of our headlamps, then, noticing that the full moon shines bright enough, only in the pale glow of the moon. A long line of fellow climbers snakes up the mountain like a line of fireflies. For every two of us there’s one guide, prepared to help anyone down on short notice. Failure is a very real possibility. We’ve witnessed a helicopter rescue the day before and seen four porters more or less carry down a client who was stumbling blindly and drunkenly with blood from his nose. Right from the start people are passing us going down. Walking with the help and support of their guides they have already succumbed to exhaustion and altitude sickness. Some are even climbing with supplemental oxygen.

When our lead guide turns around to me at 5500m and asks his regular check up “How are you doing?” my reply is “Never better”. It’s the truth. It’s a highly emotional moment for me, with tears in my eyes. I have just realized I’m likely gonna make it. Without much trouble too, up to this point I’m still breathing exclusively through my nose. A full moon hanging over the glaciers in front of me. A fantastically beautiful sunrise over a sea of clouds behind me. Icy strong winds ripping at my face. Body working at maximum efficiency, every step a minor victory. It’s beautiful. I’m absolutely loving every second of it. This is exactly where I want to be.

Unfortunately not everyone is doing great. Volker is suffering the worst. He’s by far the skinniest of the group and starting the day without a proper breakfast (some cookies) in the frosty wind chilled him quite a bit and sapped up his reserves. He’s also the only one taking Malaria prophylaxis with potentially strong side effects and unfortunate interactions with altitude. He starts falling asleep while walking (!), only to wake up when bumping into someone. He’s also getting weird dreams and hallucinations and is starting to lose control of his muscles.
We are the slowest group on the mountain and Barty and Alex are starting to get really cold waiting every couple of steps. They decide to separate from the rest of the group and charge ahead to get warm. Before long Barty will pass his daypack to the guide to ease his load on the final stretch.
I’m staying close behind Anita who has started to lose feeling in her legs and I carefully nudge her left or right to keep her on the trail when she’s swaying or stumbling too much.

No matter. Whatever one may say about our little hodge podge group of armchair mountaineers - we weren’t easily discouraged or lacking in determination. So it is that with extraordinary strength of will all six of us reach Uhuru peak, the highest point of Africa at 5895m!

Quite an impressive feat, especially if you consider that this was the first long hike or even mountain climb for some of us. I’m especially proud that Anita as the only girl in the group made it on her own power. During the trip she grew particularly fond of our second guide Mr Mango who cheered her on with: “Poa poa kichisi kama Anita!” which became a constant meme in our group and means something like “Cool cool like Anita!”.

From the summit we did a tour-de-force descent. We needed to get down 2800m in order to reach an altitude we were allowed and able to sleep. Babuu took Volker, who was pretty far gone by this point, under the arm and practically teleported him down the mountain, gravel running/sliding back to Barafu camp. We others followed much slower. Since we started our ascent in the middle of the night I didn’t put sun screen on in a timely enough manner and got burned quite a bit even before 10 in the morning. After a short rest in Barafu we started down a direct and very boring route to about 3100m altitude. It was a painfully long trek for Anita who had developed some nasty blisters.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The only blemish for me is the expedition style. I’m well aware of the fact that we wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of climbing this without the tremendous help of our guides and porters. From a mountaineering point of view the climb is pretty ridiculous though. The porters carried a lunch table, chairs and a frickin’ toilet for crying out loud! I’d prefer a clean, alpine style. Next time! ;-)

At the park exit we were immediately besieged by merchants peddling their wares and people offering to clean our hiking boots. Back at the hotel we invited our guides to drinks. This was a bit of an awkward situation and delicate to handle as we basically drank away their salary for a week that night. We had arranged a wake up call for 3:30 in the morning to get us to the airport in time for our flight at 6:00. From prior experience with wake up calls we expected this not to work. We did good to do so, because it didn’t. Fortunately we had set our own alarms as backup and the taxi was already in the yard with the driver sleeping in the seat. Moshi -> Nairobi -> Amsterdam -> Düsseldorf -> Zürich. After close to 24 hours in transit (2 hours time difference) I arrived home at around midnight and was back at my desk at work in time the next morning. Quite a surreal transition and culture shock.

Awesome vacation! Awesome group! Thanks and cheers to the gang!

All photos here.

Africa 2012: Safari

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:15:00 +0000

(continued from part I)

Continuing our journey by plane to Kilimanjaro international airport in Moshi, Tanzania. An airport so big you can actually bypass security by accidentally choosing the wrong door from the airfield into the building ;-) We get picked up and driven to our hotel, the Springlands Hotel. We pass a bustling market and an abandoned railway line which now functions as some sort of pedestrian zone. The roads leading away from the airport are decent and paved. However, we turn off this in Moshi onto something we don’t even recognize as a road at first. It’s mud and dust, strewn with potholes and so wide it’s not clear where the “road” ends and the fields begin. Careful slalom. The drivers have learned to navigate such terrain and we seldom hit the ground with more than our tires... Which reminds me of pedestrian zebra crossings. The only way to enforce them are speed bumps and speed bumps they have! You have to almost come to a full stop and cross them diagonally in order not to wreck your car.

The hotel is a walled garden and guarded. Despite almost three meter high walls the dust of Africa is everywhere. The bottom of the pool gets wiped everyday or else it would turn into a mud bath. Climate is obviously very different from home as you can guess from the fact that the only place meals are served is outdoors. Only a roof for shelter and windows in the rooms that cannot be fully closed. Again, the clientele is exclusively white. There are tons of waiters and other employees swarming around. It seems every single open job position is occupied with at least three different people. One waiter for knifes, another for forks and a third for spoons or something.

We meet our driver for the next week of safari, Mohammed. He’ll take us on game drives through the national parks lake Manyara, Serengeti and the Ngorogoro crater and another one whose name I forgot. Each one more impressive than the last. Especially the crater makes you wonder why humankind ever developed agriculture if there was so much meat to choose from. Seriously, it’s kind of ridiculous. You’d try to shoot a zebra but can’t frame it without also getting giraffes, antilopes and water buffaloes into the picture. Our first elephant sighting caused lots of Ohs and Ahs but by the end of the week we’d be so spoiled we’d be mildly annoyed there was yet another herd of elephants blocking the road again.

Mohammed is a very experienced driver and knows the place like the back of his hand. The drivers are in active radio contact and give each other tips about the latest sightings. For rare animals or animals of “The Big Five” (lion, elephant, cape buffalo, leopard and rhinoceros) you haven’t seen yet that means a wild chase to the spot of the sighting. Drivers usually get an extra tip if they manage to show their clients all of the big five, hence the incentive to fly like the devil over the sand pistes. We were extraordinarily successful and had multiple sightings of each, including rarer or shy ones like cheetahs, warthogs and the hyena. The later one must be the most ugly creature ever and would sneak around our tented camp at night, making all kinds of strange wailing noises. Anita was particularly fond of all the young animals and we started mocking her by imitating overjoyed “Ohhh, baby elephant/giraffe/monkey/lion/zebra/x” exclamations whenever we saw one (or didn’t).

Mohammed has an impressively keen eye for spotting lions hiding and hunting in the tall grass or leopards chilling in the shade of the crown of a tree with their dead prey on a branch nearby. He taught us to tell the difference between a male and a female leopard in a tree: the female will lie flat on the branch with limps hanging down left and right of it while the male will have both legs to one side of the branch as not to hurt his balls ;-) He also warns us about some large birds in the trees at one of our rest spots. We acknowledge that and proceed to eat our lunch packs, thinking that if the birds wanted our food they’d beg and hop around like the birds we are used to from home would. Far off. One of them does a combat dive straight for Volker’s sandwich and we only realize what happened from Volker’s surprised scream, his missing sandwich and bleeding hand. Lesson learned.

It’s usually not allowed to leave the car in order to protect yourself and the park. While this is a perfectly reasonable limitation it does get annoying to drive around for so long a time. The drivers have developed various mocking games over the radio or when meeting to keep it entertaining. Mohammed seemed to occupy some sort of alpha male role amongst them and was usually the fastest, boldest and most aggressive. He’d intentionally bump into other cars to push them out of the way. All in good humour and mostly accompanied with lots of hearty laughs. Needless to say I enjoyed this kind of macho behaviour and rewarded him with a generous tip and my binoculars (which he often borrowed) after the trip ;-)

Tanzania has two official languages: Swahili and English. All billboard advertisements and signs are in English. This should make communication easy in theory. In practice we found that while our English wasn’t great the other party was usually even worse. This lead to an unfortunate misunderstanding where Alex tried to compliment Mohammed on his knowledge of the place and taking us the road less travelled into an area that looked like a grass desert. His choice of words contained a phrase like “big nothingness” which Mohammed interpreted as us complaining about being bored and him disappointing us. Exactly backwards. Caused him to turn around immediately and floor the gas pedal in order to make good. Took a while to soothe him and convince him we were more than happy with his services. Resulted in some laughs and a “Hakuna matata” (literally: There are no worries).

It seems everything here is out to get you. During the day you’ll have the Tsetse fly transmitting human sleeping sickness, during the night mosquitoes transmitting malaria. Lots of poisonous snakes and nasty parasites. Not to mention the big game, which, if you annoy it enough, will easily stomp you. Hyenas with rabies sneaking around your camp, bacteria flavouring your drinking water. All but one of us were suffering from more or less bad cases of diarrhea. We’d develop running gags about the texture and consistency of our shit and inform each other in great detail about our latest produce. This became even more pronounced later on the mountain. It’s astonishing how crucial and interesting the simplest body functions can become. It’s also astonishing how much the human body can absorb. In the space of a few days we had completely changed our diet; moved our sleeping schedule by a couple of hours time difference; teleported from winter to summer; from -15 degrees Celsius in Switzerland to 35 degrees in the shade in Africa, a difference of 50 degrees! And this was only the beginning, we fully intended to climb from sea level to almost 6000m and less than half the usual air pressure and thus oxygen.

We spent a night in the Highview Hotel in Karatu. Again a hotel with an outdoor pool. Completely perverse as the water for the whole village has to be pumped from a 900m deep (!) well and up the mountain to the hotel. The hotel is trying to do good and started lots of initiatives to involve the local population. Massai women are allowed to sell their craft on the property, farmers cultivate coffee and various other agricultural crops. Massai men are allowed to work as porters in a month long rotation to earn some money in tips. You end up passing your luggage to a Massai warrior in traditional dress complete with knife and huge ear piercings walking in sandals made from worn out car tires. We took a tour of the premises and were shown around. Climbing the hill behind the hotel, passing a big hole in the ground with smoldering garbage (the usual way to dispose of it here), you can visit a hut where the porter Massai live and keep some cattle. Although the hotel is by no means luxurious compared to European standards the contrast to the hut is stark. Primitively made from sticks and leafs, dark and smelly due to an open fire burning 24/7 to keep the insects out. Bedsteads made from naked pieces of foam. Most porters, Massai or not, seemed to be illiterate as we discovered with confused room numbers and baggage room slips. The hotel tries to encourage the Massai, especially the women, to go to school and to this end provides scholarships and sponsoring. Of course lessons are being taught in Swahili or English, not in their native tongue. Way to kill a culture. It’s moments like this that I hated myself in the role of a tourist. WTF are we doing here?

Continued in part III

Africa 2012: Nairobi, Kenya

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Africa. What can I say? It’s big, it’s poor, it’s rich, impressive, different, strange, crowded, empty, beautiful. I know all that and I’ve only ever seen a tiny sliver of it and even that was confined to tourist places. Six of us (Anita, Sören, Barty, Alex, Michael, Volker) went on a two week trip to Tanzania with a short stop in Kenya. The first week on a safari to lake Manyara, the Serengeti and the Ngorogoro crater. Second week climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest peak on the continent. A very impressive vacation to put it mildly ;-)

Due to insane airline pricing policies and us starting from different cities in Germany or, in my case, Switzerland we ended up on a crazy flight itinerary. The plan had me starting from Switzerland to Düsseldorf, wait 6 hours, continue to Amsterdam, to Nairobi and then to Moshi. Since I’ve become somewhat of a frequent flier with Anita and me in a long distance relationship I took a very relaxed approach to planning my departure. Too relaxed as it turned out. Since I’m not used to travelling with checked baggage I showed up to the airport far too late. Oops. So I took the train from Zürich to Düsseldorf instead and arrived just in time for our connecting flight.

Our itinerary called for a 12.5 hour layover in Nairobi, the capital and biggest city of Kenya. We decided to make good use of that time by exploring the city. Unfortunately Barty, Michael and Alex didn’t have yellow fever inoculation which is required if you want to cross from Kenya to Tanzania. So they camped at the airport while Anita, Volker and me bought transit visas and acquired a guide and taxi driver for the day. He’d drive us from sight to sight, pay for everything and wait for us in the car. Best deal for the short amount of time available.

We started with a snake zoo. Continued with some scenic drive along the parliament building and palace and on to the market. That was quite an experience. Our driver didn’t want to park and cruised the block while we walked the market. Or rather tried to. The only white people around for miles we were instant prey. You just have to admire African sales tactics and persistence. I only brought a single pair of trousers for the whole two weeks and intended to buy another one. The first merchants that latched on to us were in the business of selling carved figures and other tourist souvenirs. That didn’t stop them at all trying to secure me as a customer. They’d ring us, and send someone to get pants for me while others were pitching their wares in the meantime. So I ended up trying on pairs of trousers in a shop selling figurines, just below an old, crooked man sitting in a tiny cave on the shelf above me carving the wooden figurines. All the clothes they brought were far too wide for me, so they finally escorted us through a maze of tiny alleys to their source, in order I could try some on without the courier delay in between.

After finally finding a pair I liked and was willing to buy haggling started. This was fun too. I’m sure I got ripped off pretty badly compared to what locals pay - but then again, a trade is successful if both parties are happy with the result and I am. They opened by feeling the fabric of my (very expensive, new and super cool Fjällräven) shirt, commending me for it and asking its price. I had my wits together enough to lie about its real value (or should I say price?) and proclaimed a much lower value. The argument then revolved around the number of pockets which almost made me giggle. He counted how many pockets my shirt has and proceeded to show how the pants had almost a dozen more and thus must be a dozen times as expensive. Logical no? Only after I already stepped out of the shop (a 2x2m windowless room, all walls completely stacked with pants, crowded with me, three merchants and two women sewing the pants) and away from the offer did we finally close the deal.

I’d encounter this kind of aggressive selling multiple times during the trip. While it does get annoying, you can’t help but admire the persistence, flexibility, willingness and ability to improvise on the spot and don’t give up before closing at least some sort of deal. A rather mean tactic was another one: our car stops with me carelessly leaving the window open. Immediately someone would come up and start talking to me. We’d joke, he’d ask where we were coming from and where we were going. Teach me some words of his language. Then he’d offer his wares. By that point we are almost friends and I’m already indebted to him for teaching me. Guilt trip me into buying. Very hard to resist.

Just driving through the city is instructive and impressive. Life happens on the street. There are people everywhere, walking huge distances along the roads. Standing in the middle of it, offering sun glasses, newspapers, accessories, fruits, drinks, everything. Traffic lights are very few and only a suggestion anyways. Nobody cares about a red light. If you want to stop cars you need to be a police officer and jump in front of cars in death defying bouts of heroism. Intersections somehow self regulate. Cars flow around each other in dynamic and chaotic ways, honking, flashing and swerving as it suits them. Most vehicles are in a desolate state and hopelessly overloaded or overcrowded. Bicycles carrying firewood, stacked high over the heads of their riders. Motorcycles carrying a whole family of six. Minibuses designed for twelve carrying twice that many plus their luggage piled meters high on the roof. Pick up trucks loaded high so their suspensions are almost fully compressed but you still have people riding even on top of the cargo.

Most anything of value is fenced in with high walls topped with razor wire and electric fence. ATMs are guarded 24/7 by guys wielding assault rifles. Another reason some of us stayed at the airport were recent threats of terrorist attacks. We continue to a famous tourist restaurant, the “Carnivore”. We pass two security checks. The first is a road block where a guard uses a special mirror to check the underside of our car for bombs. Second is a metal gate, again guarded by people with automatic weapons. The restaurant itself is completely and insanely decadent. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of exotic meat, containing such specialties like ox balls and crocodile. Every table is equipped with a tower of dips and sauces, crowned by a small flag. While the flag is up the waiters will come around with skewers of meat and cut it directly onto your plate. They do this at a ridiculously fast pace, so you will have to put down the flag from time to time to catch up.
Of course the clientele is exclusively white while the waiters are all black. I can understand the need for security. If I was a local I’d blow up exactly this place first.

Continued in part II

HPV summit attempt

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:45:00 +0000

We had the first week of real snow so Andrey and I set out for a snow shoe hike up the Fluebrig. To make it more interesting/challenging I decided to attempt an HPV (human powered vehicle) expedition. Thus we biked to the mountain and back. In my mind we'd have perfectly dry asphalt roads right up to the mountain where it would immediately turn into deep snow. Surprisingly that's not quite how it turned out. Starting at 5:30 in the morning we had about an inch of fresh snow already with more coming down. Since we were sticking to the back roads we were using them before the snow plows had a chance to come through. This proved quite challenging. We'd slip and slide, spend a lot of energy on otherwise easy ascents and fight with clogged and frozen gear shifts. Our water bottles turned to ice and we generally had a mighty good time ;-)

Arriving at the mountain we parked our bikes at the woodshed of a local who was feeding his rabbits and donned our snow shoes. This too, proved more exhausting than anticipated since the snow was very deep, very fluffy and we were the first to break a trail. Plowing our way through, sometimes up to our balls in the white stuff, we made it to the Fläschlihöchi at 1368m. It was at this point that we wisely decided to change our destination to a more modest peak. The original plan had us going up the Diethelm at 2092m. However, it was already too late in the day, we had expended too much energy and the required steep traverse looked too dangerous considering that the avalanche bulletin had issued a significant/severe warning level for the area. So we hiked a long and quite beautiful ridge to the Rosenhöchi at 1507m instead.

Back down and on our bikes we started to ride back. This proved to be by far the most dangerous part of the trip. There was some kind of rush hour going on from people driving home from skiing trips. Motorists don't seem to fully appreciate how fragile a bicycle (or car for that matter) handles on frozen roads when you only have very few square inches of contact with the ground. Even 20km/h on a downhill ride are breakneck speeds when every little ditch or crack in the road will throw you without so much as a split second warning. I could hardly see anything, my glasses and puny bicycle lamp being baked with snow, being alternately blinded by oncoming traffic followed by complete darkness. Brakes nearly useless because of wet rims and fingers frozen too stiff to use them effectively anyways. Yet cars would pass so close I could touch them by simply lifting my pinky from the handle bar. Reckless fuckers showered us in slush too.

Coming home I was completely exhausted. Sitting on the warm cozy nice and soft naked concrete floor of my basement, getting out of my gators and hiking boots, it required a conscious effort not to fall asleep right then and there. Instead I had a hot bath and dropped into bed. Slept from 9 to 9, only getting up briefly at 2 in the morning to have some food ;-) Andrey actually spent Monday at home for rejuvenation. I went to work and to the climbing gym afterwards.

In total we traveled from 5:30 to 19:45, cycling more than 90km covering 800m elevation up and down. Another 10km and 700m elevation gain in snow shoes served as dessert.

Great adventure, great fun! Props to Andrey for being a strong and cool companion.

All photos here.

Schiberg (2043m), Plattenberg (2082m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:54:00 +0000

When you step out of the bus and see your destination for the first time it's intimidating. The mountain towers huge, insurmountable cliffs, peak somewhere far in the distance, hidden in clouds. Impossible!

Yet at the same time you get swept with anticipation, you've done this before, you know how this works. So you set out. Carefully measured breaths, preserving your strength. You warm up to it, find your rhythm. Step by step the mountain shrinks under you. Before you know it there's nowhere left to go - you are on top. You smile. And turn around.

Back home in the soaking hot water of your bathtub a satisfying kind of exhaustion takes hold of you. A smug feeling of pride. You remember today's rest between the sheer vertical rock. Perfect silence, perfect solitude. How majestic, how humbling, how ancient it was. You are spent, the mountain barely noticed. Infinitely patient, safe in the knowledge that it'll always win in the end.

See you next time puny human.

The weather forecast predicted rain, strong winds and snow from 1700m onwards. It proved accurate. I chose some smaller mountains to accommodate. Still turned out to be quite challenging. For one thing the wind, when tunneled between the cliffs, was so strong it made breathing difficult. At times I was literally swaying, trying to find my footing. The trail was quite spectacular, following very exposed ridges and steep traverses. It was also closed due to the slippery wet snow. I didn't know and the signs were only just below the summit (hint: if you mean it, post warnings at the trailhead instead of halfway through!), so I went ahead anyways. Crampons and ice ax were sorely needed, but other than that it proved quite doable.

Startled by some mighty rumble I witnessed several larger rockfalls. Impressive. The mountains seem to have an unlimited supply of debris and gravel. At least it keeps piling up at their feet while they don't seem to change their face at all.

I reached the second summit around 1 o'clock and intended to climb two more. However while the weather was just mildly uncomfortable getting here it turned positively annoying now. A complete whiteout with snow drifting horizontally and piercing my face. With only about 3.5 hours of daylight left I decided to call it quits. And promptly got rewarded with the weather clearing up ;-)

This is the very first hike where I actually looked up the public transportation return schedule and had my ticket booked in advance. So I ran the last 10 minutes on the road to arrive just on time with the bus. Only to have the driver come out and say: "Oh yeah, this is the weekend schedule, no trip for another hour. The information on the internet is wrong.". Grmpf. Next time I'll just wing it again, then I'm at least not feeling rushed.

Hiking time: 7h (8:00-15:00)
Distance: 22km
Elevation gain/loss: 1400m

All photos here

Uri Rotstock (2928m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 22:14:00 +0000

Another day, another hill. Uri Rotstock, 2928m. It is a neighbour to the Engelberger Rotstock, which I attempted before but had to turn around because the snow was too bad. Fast forward a couple of weeks in which Switzerland had very dry and relatively warm weather (in fact, the river Rhine in Germany carries low water because of this, giving commercial shipping a hard time) giving me hope there'll be less snow in the area this time.

As usual I leave with the first train in the morning at 5:35. This is pretty much a necessity nowadays because of the sun, the lazy slacker. Sunrise at 7:40, sun down 16:41. So I'll be racing the daylight.

Even getting to the mountain is an adventure today. The Postauto (a regular bus) climbs up the narrow and winding road with mere inches to a vertical drop on one side and sheer rock on the other. The road is closed for all other traffic whenever the bus is scheduled to be there. Great respect for the driver, this stunt would totally stress me out. He on the other hand was cheerily listening to Swiss traditional accordion folk music at full blast. We'd stop along the way several times, delivering the mail and picking up cans of milks from the farmers.
If you are looking for a memorable public transportation experience sometime I recommend taking the bus to St. Jakobs, Isenthal: http://g.co/maps/7xr34

I'd like to think that by now I'm reasonably fit. I usually overtake other hikers and beat the posted reference times by a healthy margin, especially considering that the given times only account for moving time while I include all rest and photo stops. I was thoroughly humiliated today though. About halfway up the mountain a couple overtook me from behind and kept increasing the distance between us, all the while casually chatting with each other. By the time I reached the summit they were already heading back down again, having beat me by about an hour or so. No way I could have kept pace...

I met a couple of people on the summit, among them a trio from Germany who camped on the mountain in order to summit today. We had a nice chat and shared their summit rum and my summit chocolate. One of them had ripped his trousers, leaving a huge tear in his crotch. He continuously stuffed a scarf down his pants trying to close the hole against the icy wind. Looked kinda funny ;-)

Since I hate going the same way twice I chose to descend on the other side of the mountain. I was apparently the only one to do so in quite some time. The reason was obvious almost immediately: This side is in shadow most of the time and is covered in huge snow fields. It's also much steeper and the trailmarkers difficult to find. It also features lots of frozen creeks and water slides you have to negotiate. While I didn't need them on the way up I was very glad I brought my crampons, ice axe and gators. It would have been suicidal trying to climb this without. The trail is rated a T5 challenging alpine level hike in the best of conditions. Funny really. So far I've encountered something new on every single hike. Non-stop rain, scorching sun, thunderstorms, wet snow up to my balls, mudslides, dust, rivers of ice... Lots to learn still - the mountains never get old ;-)

Back in the tiny village of Isenthal I got informed by one of the locals that I had missed the last bus out (it was 17:30!). I couldn't really confirm this from the indecipherable mess of a time schedule (seriously - who designs these things?! One needs a PhD just to know when the bus arrives). In any case I had just resolved to another couple of hours of boring and strenuous street hiking when the first car I flagged stopped and two nice ladies drove me down to the train station. All three of us were surprised by the seemingly insurmountable language barrier. They couldn't understand my high German and I couldn't decipher their Switzerdütsch. So much for speaking "the same language".

In the train back I shared a coach with lots of recruits on their way back from the weekend to their barracks. Switzerland is peculiar in this regard since they carry their weapons on them at all times. So I was sitting between a bunch of 18 year olds trying to stow their assault rifles out of the way. Many resorted to simply using them as foot rests. Strange sight to behold.

Stats:

28km distance
~2000m elevation gain, ~2200m elevation loss
8:15h hiking time
half a kilogram of chocolate consumed

2011-11-27 Uri Rotstock

Säntis (2502m), Girenspitz (2448m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 20:38:00 +0000

I was feeling sick the whole week with a sore throat, a cough and a runny nose. Thus I picked an easy peak for the weekend: Säntis (2502m), the highest point of two cantons. Nice and easy trails, very little snow. Time to summit was given with 5:50 hours. I started at 8:15 and by 13:15 I was already coming down from the second peak that day, the Girenspitz (2448m) on which I had rested for about 45 minutes after escaping from the Säntis summit. They have detonated the whole peak and replaced it with a six story tall block of concrete, turning it into a huge tourist center. Even now, outside prime season, the place was crawling with people. Very anti-climatic for a summit experience. I briefly talked with an old lady who congratulated me for actually hiking up the mountain and told me about her mountain excursions in younger years.

The road leading to the cable car base station is a cul de sac. Despite that it was still cursed with heavy traffic which echoed up the whole mountain (it's apparently very popular amongst motor bikers. Not the right way to experience a mountain IMHO. Especially when public transportation works as flawlessly as it does here. I had to change trains/busses multiple times today and didn't plan ahead at all. Still I never had to wait for more than 2 minutes. The connections worked flawlessly.

Lots of signs on the trails and on the peak itself warning people when they are leaving the air conditioned Disney land and entering the alpine. Still you'd see lots of idiots scrambling around on high heels and sneakers. Apparently a third of all mountain deaths happen while hiking. I hope most of these are accounted for by clueless folks like these. I've met some pretty cool folks too though. A family with two young kids who ran up the rocks as if it was nothing. They were secured in climbing harnesses and generelly seemed well equipped.

Weather was surprisingly mild for November. Except for the peak itself where a strong wind cooled you down it was warm and sunny. I climbed 1643m and descended 1224m, covering a distance of 20km. I arrived at the bus station by 15:15, so the whole trip took 7 hours. I did very much feel that I'm operating at reduced capacity though, felt beat for about twice the distance.

Learned a new concept too. Apparently Säntis is an "Ultra" peak, meaning its prominence over the surrounding area is more than 1500m. There are only 1524 such mountains in the world, so I think that makes a worthwhile todo list ;-)

All photos here.

Wiggis (2282m) and Rautispitz (2283m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 20:45:00 +0000

Volker, an old friend of mine from Germany, visited me over the weekend. We hiked Wiggis (2282m) and Rautispitz (2283m), leaving my apartment at 6:30 in the morning and coming back 22:30 in the evening. Almost 12 hours of straight hiking in between. Beautiful weather with bright blue skies and freezing temperatures. I wisely chose two smaller peaks because we had quite some snow in the preceding weeks and I wasn't sure about the conditions on top. We had to cross some patches of snow and particularly the north faces presented quite a bit of scrambling action. It proved difficult to stay on trail sometimes because most markers were hidden below the snow and we were often the first to leave tracks.

We had one "interesting" traverse to solve. A steep section just below the peak of Wiggis to reach the ridge between Wiggis and Rautispitz. Although we met some other hikers no one dared going there. Luckily we brought crampons (thanks for borrowing Steffen!) and managed to negotiate the difficulty. A very steep slope over a ~1500m drop straight down into the valley. It's usually secured with steel cables which were now all covered with snow and unreachable. A thin layer of powder on top of a hard crust of ice. Quite a technical and psychological challenge so hats off to Volker who managed very well with little alpine experience.
In the end we totaled 2024m elevation gain and loss and a distance of around 30km. Respectable ;-)

After giving Volker the obligatory Google office tour on Sunday we went climbing in the local gym. I managed to clear a long, constantly overhanging VII UIAA route (5.10c for you Americans, 17m high, 13m overhang) while Volker flashed a lot of routes on sight, including an VIII- (5.11b).

All in all a very successful and fun weekend! ;-)

All photos here.

Engelberger Rotstock (2818m), attempt, returned from 2604m

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:28:00 +0000

A long day, 17 hours on the road, from 5:20 to 22:20. It got off to a bad start. I didn't sleep well and was feeling sick with a sore throat, running nose and slight case of diarrhea. My desk neighbor at work has been sick and spewing his gems all over me for the last week, so this was probably having an effect by now. The weather looked depressing with low hanging clouds and not a bit of blue sky in sight. Not one to be easily discouraged I still headed out with the goal of climbing the Engelberger Rotstock (2818m). And a good decision it turned out to be!

I started in the valley in the tiny village Oberrickenbach. Ascending through frozen meadows I would soon eclipse the clouds to a stunningly beautiful alpine panorama. Perfectly deep blue sky and the sun shining down on an endless sea of clouds stretching far beyond the horizon. Topped by an almost full moon still hanging in the sky. Dreamlike. The clouds drowned out all the noise coming from the valley so the silence up here was absolute and deafening. Not a bird or insect. No human. No plane, nothing. Mountain tops would peak through the sea of clouds like islands. In fact, you'd be tempted to dive right in and swim a little.

Reaching the first ridge I was supposed to traverse for a while before crossing over to "my" mountain. Unfortunately I missed the trail due to the markers being buried in snow and descended too far. So I had to scramble up again, adding the 200 or so odd meters to my path that I'd needed later. On this side the snow was packed hard and mostly frozen. Good to walk on in crampons. Unfortunately for me, crossing the summit ridge the snow was exposed to the sun and turned to wet slush. Very exhausting to navigate as you'd sink in every step. I was the first one to break a trail which made it even more strenuous. About 200 meters below the summit, at around 4 o clock in the afternoon I decided to give up and turn around. After a climb of almost 2000m, and close to 20km I was quite exhausted in my current almost-sick condition. And even if I turned around immediately I'd get down to the valley in the dark.

I stopped at the Rugghubelhütte on my way down to get some life saving calories. Half a liter of coke for instant revitalization and a big slice of cake with lots of cream. Took me all of two minutes to gulp down ;-) I earned some looks of disbelief when I answered questions of where I just arrived from and where I was going. Apparently everybody else was taking the cable car and sleeping in the hut before even attempting the summit. They thanked me for breaking the trail ;-)

I got slightly sunburned and was glad I brought my new sun glasses. The reflections on the snow would have been blinding otherwise. I have paid 1000CHF (!) for this pair of glasses, making them the most expensive (of any kind) I have ever owned. Disability tax. I need sunglasses suitable for the extra radiation at high altitudes, with a strong UV filter and covering the eyes completely. So far, no problem. But I also need corrective glasses. Problem. For my particular sight issues I had the choice between exactly three models, all equally expensive. I've tried clips to my regular glasses before, but they don't work. They are too small and have issues with fogging and collecting lint between the glasses. So I bit the bullet.

Totals for the day:

30km, 1987m elevation gain, 1887m elevation loss. Hiking time from 8:00 to 19:30, 4 hours of which in crampons. Absolutely perfect weather and some of the most stunningly beautiful vistas yet.

2011-10-15 Engelberger Rotstock

BTW, these were all taken with my new camera: A Nikon D7000 with an AF-S Nikkor 16-85mm lens. I'm still learning the ropes using it. Noticeable difference? If not I can avoid carrying a huge, expensive and unwieldy 1kg chunk of equipment around ;-)

Winter is coming

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:55:00 +0000

To quote Game of Thrones: "Winter is coming". I had planned an ambitious hike for today, covering 3 peaks and a long ridge in between. I wouldn't even reach the first one. The weather forecast predicted some amount of fresh snow for the weekend. In reality winter launched a full force frontal assault. There were around 15cm of fresh snow even in the valley. The peaks in the area received more than 80cm (!) and it just kept coming while I was slowly plowing my way upwards. Stuck waist deep in the stuff, wet to the bone, with zero visibility and more than 8 hours to go I decided to call it quits and turn around. And a good decision it was too. If going up was difficult going down proved to be even more so because now you'd start to slip and slide. I was glad that the terrain was still relatively easy and forgiving.

Aside from the snowflakes falling gently and my own steps crunching in the snow it was absolutely silent. This made it even more startling when huge branches would suddenly give in to the weight of the snow and come crashing down. I witnessed a small avalanche on the opposite slope later - another reason why it was probably wise to turn around. The snow was wet, heavy and not properly settled yet. From my limited understanding dangerous avalanche conditions.

~10km, ~800m elevation gain/loss, turned around at ~1600m. Now I have snow shoes on my shopping list ;-)

Photos here

BTW, for reference, this was last week in Germany (26°C):

Bös Fulen (2802m), Ruchen (2901m), Vrenelisgaertli (2904m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:26:00 +0000

Another great hiking weekend. My original plan was to climb the Bös Fulen on Saturday and think about something to do for Sunday afterwards. However, Steffen asked who'd want to climb the Glärnisch with him on Sunday. "Being in the area" (more on that later) I thought, great! why not? I'll join you. So we agreed to meet at the Glärnisch hut on Saturday.

I left for Linthal at 6 in the morning. Started the hike at 9. On my way up I met a downhill unicyclist (!) and a stampede of cows heading for the valley. I passed the car-free village of Braunwald, home of the famous Braunwald via ferrata. Once I reached the huge Karst formation landscape around the Bös Fulen I continued finding my own way without a marked trail. The Bös Fulen (translates to something like "evil foul") absolutely deserves its name. This is the first mountain yet that wasn't fun to climb and where I was glad to be down again. It's a huge pile of loose gravel of the nastiest kind. You take 2 steps forward and slide 1 back. This is really strenuous and really, really annoying. You take every.single.step. twice. It's also immensely dangerous since you keep getting into more or less minor rock slides that take the ground from under you and move you towards the many vertical drops. The mountain itself is constantly throwing boulders from above, playing darts with you as the target. The tiny glacier at its feet is littered with rocks fallen from above. No wonder I was the first to leave tracks in the snow on the summit ridge and the only one to enter my name into the summit book for 10 days.

In order to reach our meeting point I had to circle the whole mountain and climb to the hut. All in all I'd end the day at around 10 in the evening after almost 13 hours of straight hiking. I covered a distance of more than 35km, climbed more than 3000m (!!!) and descended 1700m. I've outlasted my cell phones batteries so I couldn't accurately track the whole trip via GPS. It was like running a marathon. For that, admittedly, my time wasn't great. On the other hand I was carrying more than 12kg of gear, walked in heavy hiking boots and difficult, partly trailless terrain, gained lots of elevation and had to continue in the dark for two hours. So there ;-) All of that on a handfull of energy bars. By the time I finally arrived at the hut I was starving. Fortunately the crew was so nice as to give me an extra big serving of pasta which revitalized me somewhat. Official dinner time was long over so they cooked extra for me.

I didn't meet either Steffen or Andrey since both of them already went to bed. The hut was crowded. Fortunately I had reserved a spot beforehand and squeezed into the last narrow slot in the bed camp. It was gonna be a short night. The amount of oxygen in the room with 30 people must have been close to zero, despite my earplugs I could hear people snoring and my right and left neighbours would regularly kick me in their sleep. And of course, I'd get up at 5 in the morning anyways...

Early start in the light of our headlamps before dawn. A long line of hikers is leaving the hut - a fluorescent centipede snaking up the narrow trail in the dark. Short stop at the start of the glacier to don crampons and gators, and, for some folks, rope up. We didn't bring any rope, trusting the tracks pioneered by the ones before us. I still broke into a small crevasse with one foot on our way down. Nothing happened, but I had so much forward momentum going fast down the glacier I squeezed and hurt my leg in the ice. Anyway, Steffen's plan had us ascending the Ruchen first. This turned out to be a good idea because that way we could separate from the main crowd and have the summit to ourselves. Very nice climbing, good holds on the rock, not too exposed and mostly very solid. Spectacular views towards lake Klöntal, almost 2000m straight down below us. We enjoyed fantasies of flying ;-)

Scrambling down the Ruchen we headed for the top of the glacier, the entry point to the Schwander ridge. You have to negotiate quite a steep drop to reach the ridge. Fortunately this has been well secured and turned into a short via ferrata section. In fact, the mountain sees so much traffic, that two routes have been installed which are used in a one way fashion. The ridge itself is nice: long and quite exposed with nice views to either side. Unfortunately we only caught glimpses of it because the clouds were moving in. The summit itself was a bit unspectacular because we were standing in the fog and in a crowd of people. There is some sort of fairy tale that gives this peak its name. Something involving a snooty shepherd daughter, a poor boy, a mother-in-law, a garden on the top of the mountain and a curse. Apparently the curse can be lifted if someone in true love kisses the right rock three times. No, we did not go around kissing stone. A sad fact is that the when this tale originated the peak was covered in snow year round. That hasn't been the case for a few years now.

We stopped for some cake at the hut on our way back down. I ordered so much (for myself) that I got two spoons with my plate ;-) Relaxing hike down to the hotel above the lake where we made the 4:30 bus. 1280m climb, 2200m descent, ~21km distance.

Thanks to my companions for a great trip! Looking forwards to going again.

All photos here

Gross Chärpf (2794m)

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 10:34:00 +0000

Revenge! My last attempt climbing the Gross Chärpf failed due to bad weather. The weather forecast this time around wasn't very promising either: overcast and cloudy with strong winds of 55km/h, thunderstorms and rain in the afternoon. I figured I could still do it if I slipped in and out before the really bad weather hit. I don't like travelling the same path twice. Since I had exhausted the easy access route last time around I now had to use the more difficult one. It is far longer and covers twice as much vertical distance.

I left my apartment in the dark at 5:15 in the morning and returned in the dark at 21:30 in the evening. In between lay a hike of 33km, 2406m ascent and 2445m descent covering a total of almost 5 (!) vertical kilometers. The trail is rated T5 in the higher parts with extra difficulty for route finding and dangerous rock fall. The last 100 height meters towards the summit don't have a marked trail at all. I used the normal route for descent but climbed a near vertical and partly overhanging cliff for ascent. So I scaled the most difficult route for ascent, circled the peak and pissed on it - mountain vs BuschnicK 1:1 ;-)

Since I was racing the weather all the time (and didn't have much daylight for a trip this long anyway) I didn't stop for rest even once. Only on the summit did I take a break to eat my traditional summit Wasabi flavored peas. The posted hiking time to the hut is 4:40 hours which took me 3:30 hours. Just when I was down from the summit the clouds moved in and a fierce thunderstorm hit the area. It soaked me in the 2 minutes it took to don my rain gear. The rain would soon stop though and allow me to witness a beautiful dance of clouds in the sky. I cannot imagine a more beautiful or majestic place to be than the mountains. No place radiates so much raw energy, is so uncaringly wild yet is home to delicate life.

All in all I beat my personal height record in a single day, scaled the most technically difficult peak yet and returned home safely and without feeling overly exhausted. Epic victory ;-)

All photos

Summit! 2011-08-30, 10:20, Lagginhorn 4010m

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:32:00 +0000

My first "real" peak. A former colleague of mine from Germany mailed a couple of months ago and asked whether I was interested to cross the 4000m line with him. Not a question really - I'd have gone if he had asked for 8000m ;-) We chose the Lagginhorn in the Wallis alps. It is considered an easy peak and you can avoid crossing a glacier which is a good idea if you are a rope team of only two.

We did the whole trip "by fair means" which, according to our definition, means not taking advantage of any civilization amenities like cable cars or staying at huts. So we carried our bivouac equipment and set up a bivvy at 2900m. Beautifully clear night sky with a gazillion stars. A stark contrast to the light polluted valleys. For our first day on the mountain we did an acclimatization via ferrata trip to the top of the Jägihorn (3206m). I have done quite a few via ferratas in the past, but this one was humbling. A lot more difficult than expected. Especially so since Jaron and I tried to avoid any artificial climbing aids. That worked for most of the route but some parts were a bit too daring to attempt without. The route also features a quite spectacular rope bridge spanning the gap between two peaks. Very exposed.

On summit day after another bivvy we woke up in the dark at 5 in the morning and climbed out of our frozen (!) sleeping bags. A quick breakfast and we started the ascent over the west ridge via some easy block climbing in the unsteady light of our headlamps. The mountain was friendly to us and presented itself in gorgeous weather. The firn fields towards the summit were frozen solid and easy to negotiate with crampons and ice axe. We reached the peak at 10:20 and enjoyed breathtaking (the air is thinner up there ;-)) 360° vistas. After that we descended 2600m back to base and enjoyed a well deserved beer.

The next day was spent climbing in a canyon carved out by the river right next to our camp ground. Perfect granite rock and very nice routes. Unfortunately we didn't have a guide book for the wall and so had to guess which routes were doable and which were too hard. We managed quite OK but had to climb some rescue missions for our climbing gear. Another interesting feature of that particular canyon turned out to be the power generation station at the top of the river. The creek would randomly swell and flood our belaying spot.

Returning home Tobias and Christiane were waiting for me in my apartment, spending the last leg of their vacation trip in Switzerland. I gave them the Google office tour and took them up the Grosse Mythen (1898m).

Great trip, great vacation, great life ;-)

All pictures here

Bärentrek with Anita

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:55:00 +0000

7 days, 6 nights, 7197m elevation gain on the Bärentrek in the Berner Oberland. It was cloudy and raining every day - except when it was cloudy and snowing ;-) Beautiful trail and scenery. Highest point was the Bütlassesattel on the Gspaltenhorn with 3000m. Highest hut was the Blümlialp at 2840m. We woke up to fresh snow (down to ~2500m) and -6 degrees Celsius. We started in Meiringen and returned from Kandersteg.

We walked the Eiger trail below the world famous North Face. It is indeed quite impressive, the whole mountain looks forbidding and hostile. I'd very much like to climb it - not the north face but via the easier west ridge. One day...

Although the weather spoiled quite a few beautiful vistas it was also a good thing for us. We didn't book any of the huts in advance. Apparently all of them would have been full but most folks didn't show up due to the weather. We ended up being lucky and having some of the bed camps entirely to ourselves. So there you wimps! ;-)

I love this place!

All fotos:

2011-08-03 - 2011-08-09 Bärentrek

Gross Chärpf (2794m), attempt, returned from ~2605m

noreply@blogger.com (Sören Meyer-Eppler) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Ok, I'm officially pissed at the weather now. We had rain pretty much every single day of July. Today was no different. The trail is rated T5 (challenging alpine level hike) with the last leg on the ridge having no trail at all and requiring some easy climbing. It turned out difficult for all the wrong reasons:

I was sloshing through deep mud created by cows using the soaked trail
visibility was next to nil so finding trail markers turned out to be quite difficult
ever tried walking on dripping wet grass on a steep incline?
patches of heavy wet snow hid even more of the trail and presented another slippery slope
apparently the mountain is famously dangerous for its rock falls. I can confirm this. Pieces of rock would come off the wall regularly

Anyway. I'm adventurous, not suicidal. Soaked to the bone with a feeling as if I was walking in buckets of water instead of hiking boots I decided to turn around after reaching the summit ridge and climbing parts. Incredibly frustrating.

Near the top it was windy with temperatures just above freezing. I'm glad I did bring my gloves this time ;-) ~1550m elevation gain, ~1700m descent, ~20km in 8.5 hours. At least the Swiss public transportation system didn't let me down. 5 minutes after I reached the road a bus picked me up and I was on my way home.

Sooo close!

All pictures:

2011-07-30 Gross Chärpf