Großvenediger Attempt

Published on 2024-03-28 by Michael Stanton

Well, I hoped the weather would be good enough to ski to the summit but it wasn't.

I hiked in Thursday morning, switching to skis after about 2 hours of walking. At the lake below the hut, there was a tremendous wind and snowstorm. With some difficulty I crossed the frozen lake and started uphill, aided by seeing a few people higher on the slope. Later, I was confused about how to traverse over to the hut, and again people helped me by being up above.

The wind destroyed all tracks instantly, but with a little luck I came to the right place to descend gently to the hut, making it there at 5 pm.

I had a good dinner and okay sleep in the cold roof common room. The weather was bad the next day and the forecast for Saturday had tremendous wind. I decided to go out and maybe ski up the Schlieferspitze across the lake. I skied down to the lake, then up about 400 meters. But by then the wind was incredibly strong and the clouds were coming in. I decided to just get out of there.

Even that was tough because I had no visibility. I couldn't even tell if I was moving sometimes over the roar of the wind!

Once down below the lake things got easier. Back to the car a bit after 12.