Südwandschmankerl

Published on 2020-5-30 by Michael Stanton

Jong and I went to the Buchstein and climbed this old favorite route. I guess it's the third time for me!

Jong climbing the second pitch.

We arrived at the base of the route with a number of other parties. One party of three was at the first belay. I was up next, so I hurried a little bit. What a fun pitch this is! It's amazing how much I enjoy this kind of grade V terrain. I just never get tired of it. I joined the party above, from Oberstdorf. Jong came up, however the party was struggling somewhat. The man and woman from Garmisch behind Jong came up, and we realized we'd shared the MaMa Kante the Thursday a week prior. Amazing what a small world it is!

Then another man climbed up too, and no one could leave the belay due to the troubles above. Finally this team decided to abseil down. To make the belay less crowded I suggested that I go ahead and climb the pitch up to a niche, then the last abseiler could do his thing at the same time as I climbed. So once again I had to hurry. The first moves of this pitch are the most interesting, then things calmed down a bit. It was good to get away from such a large crowd (6 people?). Uff! The next pitch looked very inviting -- a sometimes shallow crack/corner. At the most difficult part I almost gave up. I was able to step up in the shallow, insecure crack to click a draw into a bolt but I didn't trust my ability to get the rope up over my head without slipping. So I came back down and discovered some holds on the face to the left. Using these, I was able to work my way back to my draw and clip it. Yay! That was a good little test of my abilities. Jong said I pulled on the draw which really bothered me because I almost did ("You did!" he'd say joyously). Hmpf! Jong came up and made the tricky moves that start the last pitch, then continued to the top. I thought pitch four would be somewhat uninteresting, but it was really enjoyable.

Passing by the Tegernseerhütte (now a construction site), we hiked down and decided to climb the VI- route on the slab right of the trail. I led this in one 50 meter pitch. Really fun and somewhat intimidating. After abseiling down, I re-lead the first four bolts, then top-roped them once. This was just to get my rock climbing legs under me. The moves are slabby, though aided by "Wasserrillen."

A fun day!