Climbing through "the white hell" of Piz Palü (Switzerland)
Hello fellow mountaineers,
Today I am going to share the first attempt of mine to break the 4000m barrier in the Swiss Alps. We were aiming for the 4039m high Piz Bernina in the "Kanton Graubünden", Switzerland and wanted to get there via the famous Piz Palü. (There is a Film called "Die weiße Hölle am Piz Palü", translating to "The white hell of Piz Palü)
I know many people in Nepal or even South America live way higher, but as you will see, climbing 4000m+ peaks in the european alps sounds easy, but it certainly is not. (for me) (If you don't like mountain images, this post is not for you :) )
It all started with a long drive from Upper Austria to Switzerland and a 1000m warm up hike to the 2990m high "Diavolezza Hut". At this point my headache already started to give my a really but time, but i still decided to do another warm up tour to get adjusted to height.
Piz Palü as seen from our warm a tour to Piz Torvat
Me trying to look like i was not having a bad headache
The three pillars of Piz Palü on the left and Piz Bernina on the right
Piz Palü and the famous "Bianco Grat" and the right
Piz Palü in detail
The next morning we got up at 03:00am to start our trip. Long before the sun came up, we managed to cross the field of stone-debris the glacier is pushing down into the glens and put on our climbing gear, ice axes, helmets and crampons. The landscape soon looked like out of this world and i was mesmerized immediately.
We crossed huge carvasses on our way to the ridge
The ascend was long and steep. The lack of oxygen made me breath hard and my head almost explode
Near the first summit (out of three) of Piz Palü
Me on my way up the "Himmelsleiter", translating to "stairway to heaven" of Piz Palü
It was almost surreal in it's beauty and vastness
Crossing of to the second peak of Piz Palü....
...before decending again.....
...and reaching the summit at 3995m.
Before we reache the "Marco e Rosa" Hut at 3600m we had to decend and cross the huge "Bellavista" terrace. Doing so took another five hours so, we were really exhausted and happy when we finally reached the hut.
Decending from Piz Palü
The ridge we had to climb down
Finally arriving at the hut
A had a very cold (no heating at 3600m) and short (i could not sleep, my resting pulse was way above 95 bpm) night, i surprisingly started to feel better and regained some of my strength. When i went down at 05:00am to check the weather, i saw this....
...and off were me dreams of ascending Piz Bernina
The Swiss helicopter pilots are known for their daredevil manouvers. This one seemed crazy to me. No sight, snowfall and strong winds were defied to resupply the Marco e Rosa hut.
After waiting for two hours for better weather we decided to decend via the "Spallergrat". The thing was, there still was no sight....
...as you can see....
...or not see, to be exact
So we decided to return to the hut again and waited for the sun to break through, what took her another two hous to do. So it was already around 10am when we finally were able to leave the hut for good and started our 12hour decend.
weather cleared up, at least for a while. (Me trying to not look exhausted)
The thing is, it pumped out 20-40cm of fresh snow, so we had to shape/build/find our track through the glacier ourselfes and got lost several times. The way down wasn't easy either. We had to abseil our self several times, and the climbing ground was A nice mix of fresh snow, ice, earth and stone.
Preparing to abseil
Me abseiling on a ridge
Waiting for the front guides to prepare the ropes
So around 10pm we were fianlly reaching even terrain and everyone was happy to be over the most difficult parts of today.
BUT we did not know we had to ascend another 200m to reach the hut. ARGH.....
Back at the hut after all!
This was one of my first mountaineering expiriences and many more i want to share with you the next weeks have followed since then.
I hope you enjoyed my adventure and i was able to give you an image of the vastness and the beauty of the european alps. If you liked what you saw and want to support me, feel free to upvote and resteem this post. Thank you.
Florian
What a climb, it looks beautiful and difficult. I imagine that each person who climbs challenging peaks like these must go through quite an internal journey especially given the altitude (headaches, thinner oxygen etc...), what a great accomplishment!
Thank you very much, it is a challenge but any average person, like me, can do it with some training in advance. Sad thing is, you can't really train for height adjustment. They only thing that really helps is to go high and wait for acclimatisation.
So 5 meters were missing to hit the 4000m mark. But who cares?!? That sure must have been an amazing adventure. Thank you for the contribution.
Upvoted and resteemed by the @Climbing-Trail!
The @Climbing-Trail is an account to give climbing, alpinism and hiking a plattform here on Steemit. It is run and curated by @HaTo.
Yeah, have done a lot of more difficult lower 3000+ peaks, but never made it across the 4000m line. We did another attempt some time later, but weather made even the peak of Piz Palü impossible. So i am kind of unlucky with Piz Bernina, but i have not given up yet... :)
That's the spirit! Never give up! :-)
An amazing trip with great images. I would never try it but I admire your skill and endurance.
Thank you very much! As most things in life, it looks way more difficult than it actually is!
Congratulations @icountedzero! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPYour post is very effective and powerful, Thanks for sharing
Upvoted !
By the way ,I started following you and I would appreciate your follow back too .
please visit my blog and Upvote me too.
This post recieved an upvote from minnowpond. If you would like to recieve upvotes from minnowpond on all your posts, simply FOLLOW @minnowpond
Awesome story and great photos. 🙂 I'm looking forward to more.
Thank you very much, there is more coming in soon!
Cool, great pics!
Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it!
Congratulations @icountedzero! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP@icountedzero
very nice photos and beautiful places... nice location... switzerland is an amazing place
Thank you very much. I really love the swiss alps and i would love to go there more often, but my student budget is kind of ristricting me... :)
keep steeming hot and you go anywhere... wish you all the best and find time to check my blog posts