2017-01-21

Ice Climbing Jetzloch (near Elm)

Mark, Luigi and I went ice climbing on Sunday. As the first climb of the season we chose the easy Anfängerverschneidung WI3+ at the Jetzloch near Elm. Luigi did all the heavy lifting of planning the trip (figuring out if we'd actually find ice!), driving us there and leading the climb itself - thank you! While there was enough ice, the first lead was still an intimidating endeavor as there were lots of pockets of air in the ice and it didn't take screws very well. You'd often have glass-like plates that shattered on contact.

Parking right next to a tank.
Approaching the main falls. We climbed the line on the right.
Digging our way up to a belay stance.

We'd left the gray mist in the valley and enjoyed beautiful blue skies in the mountains. It was very windy and we stayed in the shade all day which made it quite chilly. We set up a top rope and climbed a few variations of the original line. My first attempt was clumsy and awkward but the motions quickly returned and already my second climb felt much better and more confident. Mark and I tried a dry tooling line next to the ice and managed to fumble our way up, getting very pumped in the process. Fun!

Luigi doing his thing.
Mark.
Ice, ice, baby.
Swiss party getting blasted by spindrift. They showed up later in the day and were the only other group in the entire valley.

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