Its wintertime now in the alps, snow is falling. I`m spending a lot of time at the gym, jumping around on my new trampoline and last but not least skiing. The days are short, cold and not really motivating to do big things. Weaterforecaster predict a lot of snow, imagine... every „snow addict“ is pumped. There is already a sweet deal of snow higher up, the summits all around Zermatt are deeply covered.
I still get excited thinking about the past fall. I accomplished the last part of my mountain guide education. It was a tough exam and after my succsesful graduation i didn't have enough time to celebrate.
...I am jumaring like a whirlwind up to the little light shining from Simons headlamp. On the belay we change the gear. I will lead the next few pitches. Right now we are the only ones climbing the Captain . Other climbers are sleeping, cooking or drinking beer on their portaledges. We climb at night, because it's too warm to climb during the day. When we started climbing at 4 pm it was warmer then 35° degrees for sure .
Good conditions for one more day before bad weather will come in. We decide to climb the nose...
Yuji Hiharama and Hans Florine climbed this Route in 2 hours and 37 minutes, so we could reach the top in one day. We continue climbing whit the shortfixing technique. One is leading, gets to the stand, fixes the rope. The other is following on jumars. The one going ahead whit a lot of floppy rope. This way of moving on is fast, effective and risky. After 5 hours 50 minutes we are stand on the summit of El Cap. We are miles away from the speedrecord of the nose, but happy. Its the second time for both of us to climb this route. We had climbed it 5 years ago. Hans Florine climbed the Nose 65 times before he broke the record whit Yuji. The Huberbuam needed 18 approaches for the secondbest time.
Finally we have some rain and we enjoy to have a break. We get a last good weather period before the winter is coming in to the valley. We both want to climb Salathé in a push, after 9 hours we stand again on El Cap. How do i hate the descend of this mountain.
We are tired of all the big walls, but still our minds are not resting. There is one more thing that we want to climb bevore the swissboys are leaving the sinking titanic, the Halfdome Nose Linkup is fascinating us. One day after our Salathé trip, we walk up to the Base of Halfdome. At night the clouds around the summit are dark. At 5 am we decide to get things done. We only have a 70 meter single rope and a 20 meters long tagline, so there is no really good way back to the ground. We have to top out and walk down the other side.
Certainly we are walking down from Halfdome on a beautiful and sunny november day. With the car we drive to the base of the nose it is around 1pm.
I lead up under the great roof, Simon is leading the last 12 pitches. I am jumaring 1000 meters above the ground, swinging around on the rope. My muscles are done, i am done, the last month i hat the pleasure of climbing with Simon Westface, Lurking Fear, Zodiac, Tangerine Trip, Lost in America, North American Wall, Mescalito, Nose, Salathé and now the Halfdome-Nose Linkup.
Happy but really tired we descend the 10th time from the gigantic El Capitan. Soon it starts to rain, we are glad to be on our way down.
Samuel
Westface 5.11c 19 pitches in 6h 20min
Lurking Fear 5.7 C2 19 pitches in 10h 55min
Zodiac 5.7 A2 16 pitches in 12h 20min - by night
Tangerine Trip 5.7 A3 17 pitches in 14h
Lost in America 5.10 A4 2 days
North American Wall 5.8 A2 26 pitches 14h
Mescalito - A3 26 pitches 1.5 days
The Nose - 5.13c or 5.9 A2, 35 pitches, 5h 50 min
Salathé - 5.13b 35 pitches, 9h
Linkup Half Dome – The Nose C1 5.9 54 pitches 11 h 50 min
Photos « previous | next »