Introduction

There are not many reports of climbs of the Grundübelhorn on the web. After climbing the Südkante in the fall of 2006, I was really interested to read the trip report below. I translated it from the German and thought others might be interested in reading it too.

The original link is here.

Apologies in advance for poor quality in the translation, but I strove to at least get the gist of the story across!

Translated Report

What a tour! With security at the the extremist parts, or so I thought before. I was with Etienne, Andreas and Jens, my friends from the DAV climbing course.

We thought it was a long tour for Sunday, so we carried up extra gear Saturday and set up a bivy a half hour from the start of the climb, at a saddle about 1500 meters high. It was a relaxed affair. The night was exceedingly cool. Without the bivy sack shared with Andreas I would have been really frozen. Anyway, there was frost in the morning. We had a full moon, and the mountains were beautifully lit. Over in the Loferer Steinberge the entire ridge was lit by Johannis fire.

Sunday we walked to the start pretty early. I was engaged in a relaxing morning tour. No way - 20 rope lengths! A lot of it was very easy. A few times I was leading the grade III or IV ground. The thick dogs came first anyway [ed - huh?]. As follower I mostly had the the pack on my back, what a load it was. At the first extreme bit, a belay stance in a niche, I could kneel. Soon after a Grade V pitch, where one had to pull on the pitons for help. Then a crack in a an open book would "now allow a fall over 1.5 meters" ?!? [ed - I had some trouble translating this part]

Crazy!

Well, it's academic.

Andreas had to try it pretty long before he mastered it. Following it was naturally easy. With that we stood on the second tower. First I thought, from here we'll never get away, however 15 meters below we reached a saddle to the third tower. Meanwhile, it was 5 pm and we should have reached the summit long before. However the problems just kept coming and my nerves were pretty much at an end. There were three variations on the third tower, all were grade IV. All very much underrated. Andreas tried two of them...no chance! Then below to Variant A, first 20 meters descending to a ledge system with 300 meters of air under our feet, then climbing up a chimney. The last 2 rope lengths! However they delayed us once more pretty nicely.

The transition from the belay in the last rope length looked pretty hard, but it wasn't. Jens and Etienne tried their own route, but Andreas and I came pretty easily through these ropelengths. Meanwhile it was 8:30 pm. "Laut buch" [what's that? ed] still a half hour to the summit. After an hour we'd reached the true summit after some 3rd and 4th class terrain. Going further wasn't possible because of the surrounding darkness. We had to make an emergency bivouac here. A 2 man bivy sack, a rescue blanket, 1/2 a liter of water, 8 müsli bars, 4 bonbons, 3 pieces of bread, 200 grams of chese and 2 candy bars. Not very much for 4 people! Andreas and I shared the bivy sack. Sleeping wasn't possible, it was simply too cold. However the moon was awesome over the Hochkalter.

Finally the sun rose at 5 am. I shivered like an aspen tree. In a half hour we finally stood on the summit. At 7 am I called my boss to say I wouldn't come in to work today. Standing on the summit, so funny!

The descent still took 3 hours over 3rd and 4th class terrain. 1 hour through a gully, then a via ferrata, and then another hour to get our stuff at the saddle. At 11:30 am we were finally at our car. I was completely finished at the least, so dehydrated. Other than snowfields there was nothing moist to find.

Conclusion: leading a grade V pitch, something I'd definitely not done. The book calls it a day tour - if you fill the 24 hours of the day with climbing, then it might work! Otherwise "no way." I naturally swore to myself 1000 times during the climbing: never again! But now I feel a different way...