Arne and I had big plans for later in the week. They involved going up high, so we figured an acclimatization trip was in order. Piz Güglia is easy to get to by driving up the Julier pass and hiking from there. It's usually rated a T4 trail all the way to the summit. The mountain is steep in all aspects, so the trail is exposed but not very difficult. Or so we thought. It turned out we were early in the season (in July! This summer is truly fucked) and large patches of snow made the trail all that much harder, more risky and partially entirely inaccessible. We came prepared and brought crampons and ice axes. We didn't use the former, but the latter came in handy. Given the conditions we had the mountain entirely to ourselves for the first half of the trip. We met a lone hiker at the Fuorcla Albana saddle at 2869m altitude. He had come up from the other side and was sitting around, contemplating whether to continue or not. He ended up following our footsteps and route finding and we summitted together. A czech guy living and working in Pontresina, so this was basically his home turf.
Despite the tricky conditions we completed the round trip in very good time and I made it back in time for dinner and bedtime story with the kids. Both Arne and I felt good and strong for the entire day, so we were ready to continue with our bigger objective. Next time ;-P
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