Two wonderful autumn days climbing around the Bergseehütte

Almost everything of this year in terms of weather (at least in Switzerland) has been declared as a record since the measurement started. And in fact this weekend sticks to the "tradition" of 2015. It has never been this warm in this period of the year...up to 18°C down in the valleys. Good...let's take the chance to spend a weekend clubbing and drinking beer until late in the night and then wasting the full Saturday and Sunday recovering...not even if someone paid me 1000 CHF per day!

I've been willing to go up to the bergseehütte for a long time, and this seems to be the perfect chance for this. The hut is closed but the winter room is open which means not too many people will be climbing...and on the south sides there is no snow!

Saturday morning we drive up to Göschneralp and then up to the hut. Leave all the things we don't need there and go straight for the first climb. As a nice multi pitch we pick up the Hochscijen south ridge, not that long and rather easy, but pretty spectacular! Finding the route is not really a problem and apart from the beginning of the first abseil point (which is facing north and not south) it's all completely free of snow. Rocks are really warm and it's almost t-shirt climbing weather. Absolutely incredible!

Approaching the hut...so many options for next summer down there!

Wonderful climbing

Even if easy most of the times it's really fun!

And even find some time for nice pictures

The most "difficult" pitch of 4c

Our target for tomorrow!

On the first abseil

The evening in the hut is quite lively as many people are sleeping in the winter room! The one sitting next to us at the table are actually a really nice couple of "aged" climbers. Very nice to hear people that could be as "old" as my parents speaking about routes, grades, rock conditions, friends and nuts, and getting in all sort of troubles!

Wake up at 6:00 to enjoy a quite relaxed breakfast and then start walking direction Bergseeschijen. A longer route compared to yesterday, and also a bit more difficult. The approach takes already a bit longer than what we expected, and that makes us already sweaty! Yes, despite being the 8th of November at 7:00am at 2500m...we are still sweating!

The first two or three pitches of the routes are not that easy, in the sense that finding the correct route and the proper stands is not really obvious. Being all slabby with very small cracks is also not really possible to put any other kind of protections, or at least we did not have the right size of nuts (...I mean the one you use for protection, not the nuts you might think!). But afterwards it gets more evident and also a lot more fun at the same time.

The pitches up to the large ledge where also the route Aladin stops are nice, but the ones afterwards are way better in my opinion. You get to climb really on the ridge and there are almost no protection. It's all on the third grade more or less and placing protection is not that difficult. But a route does not have to be difficult to actually be fun! And those pitches we actually enjoy really a lot. Then we come to the last three rope lengths before the summit, which are even better. The first one is quite short but the beginning is steep and exposed, with really good holds. The second one should be the most difficult according to the topo and starts on an incredibly cool slab, then traversing into a crack and contouring along the east side of the ridge (slightly below the ridge) to then climb up to another plateau. Here is the stand to the last and possibly coolest pitch. A bit easier than the previous one but really proper granite climbing on a very long and not so steep crack. In all those three pitches there are not that many bolts, but with friends of size 1 and 2 (BD) and nuts 4 to 9 (Wild Country) it's relatively easy to protect the key sections.

For the descent we go towards north following the ridge until the first saddle, before the ridge starts to go up again. Here there is an abseil point (only one ring bolt) at the beginning of a couloir which gets down to the bottom of the west face. There should be 3x25m abseils, but we only found two. The second one is just at the edge of the little plateau at the end of the first abseils, don0t take the old abseil point...as my friend said he would not even attach his bike there! But be careful when pulling the rope from the first one...in our case it got tangled in some rock flakes...not that nice to take it back!

The third point should be somewhere on the left side of the couloir (facing the bottom) but we did not see it. Nevertheless it was still possible to walk and down climb to the bottom. Not that nice at the beginning but it's a very short section.

Yet another wonderful climbing day, we could not really ask for anything more than this! I'm really missing skittering now, but another weekend like this would not be that bad at all!