A tricky weather day. Luigi and I opted for a late start to give the wall time to dry off and the morning showers to subside. We were still driving through short, but intense, rain showers. But by the time we passed Göschenen on the road up to Andermatt the weather gods were with us and it turned nice and sunny. Schöllenen offers an unbeatably short approach. You park on the pass road and walk for 10 minutes. Done. We were originally aiming for the "Amatörwäg", but looking up at the "Diagonale" convinced us that it must be a great climb and so we spontaneously changed our objective. I got to lead the first pitch. A 4a that you could basically walk up. This is followed by a slabby 5a before the route joins into the namesake diagonal dihedral that it follows the rest of the way. Very nice climbing that reminded me of Motörhead on Eldorado. Only this one is easier and actually has bolts ;-P Super fun climbing. Some pitches were a bit harder because the cracks were wet and slimy with running water, but it was all manageable. We made pretty good time so that the entire climb only took 2 hours.
One thing that stuck with me from this wall is how it completely messes with your sense of scale. You start on a pitch, climb for a few minutes and think you've barely made any progress at all, yet you ran out of a full 50 meter rope length. This thing is big! We climbed 7 pitches for 330m to the end of the route, but this got us not even halfway up the wall. The other noticable thing is how at first the road with all its motorcycles and trucks is super noisy. Once you are on the wall however the roaring river Reuss is drowning out all other noises.
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