Wasserbergfirst (2341m), Firsthöreli (2129m)

It's good to know a pool of people who are always willing and able to go to the mountains on a whim. Not only is Ralf one such person, he's also a veritable lexicon of potential routes. So all I had to do was ping him on Monday afternoon and have a trip and partner ready to go on Tuesday. Fantastic service ;-) We had two potential hikes we wanted to do and decided to go with the more conservative option because snow conditions were a bit uncertain. This turned out to be a good call.

Spring at lower altitudes...

...winter half an hour later.

Ralf had suggested a loop in the Bisistal, the remote end of the already remote in the first place Muotathal. I don't think there are any permanent residences in the area and all the alps are still closed because lifestock has not yet been sent to the mountains. As such we enountered only two other people during our entire day there. Bliss.

Firsthöreli (2129m)

Firsthöreli summit selfie.

Rest with a view.

Ralf is an endurance monster, having spent more days ski-touring this season alone than normal people do in a lifetime. He's also been biking a lot. This is all to say that I had to struggle a bit to maintain the pace. Corona and kids induced couch potatoe lifestyle is not conducive to good endurance performance. We still completed the 9 hour loop in less than 8, ticking off two summits, ~20km and ~1900m of elevation gain. A great day out.

View of the Wasserbergfirst. Looks impenetrable from here, but turned out not to be so bad.

This guy hissed at me and finally disappeared when I was taking too many pictures of him.

We had a lot of trailless terrain to negotiate.

Final approach to the Wasserbergfirst.

Wasserbergfirst (2341m)

Steep grassy ridge.

Ralf made the right call traversing the loop clock-wise. This way we ended up getting a lot of nice snow patches which we could surf down for the descent.

Bench with a view.