Rigelekante (V+)

Published on 2024-10-27 by Michael Stanton

I'd met Michael back in August on the Zsigmondyspitze climb. He zoomed up behind and passed me after a short conversation, then we met again right below the last pitch to the summit. I thought it was funny how we sat down on a sloping ledge and had a great chat and some laughs, while folks moved busily up and down the route with ropes off to the side. This would be our first chance to do a climb together, and we decided on the Rigelekante on the Hochgrubachspitze, since the snows of late September had finally melted and we should have a whole day of sun. So something high but also south-facing owing to the late season seemed like just the thing.

We started really early and walked up under a sliver of moonlight with the occasional aid of his headlamp (I'd misplaced mine somehow). Talking of many things, we climbed up and east from the Wochenbrunneralm parking lot. As we came beneath our peaks, the sun rose. It would be a great, silent gentle giant observing our progress, and we'd see it arc across the southern sky. We were both really pleased to discover that we follow the same rather mystical ideas about the nature and ends of the world, and of our roles in it. Nothing open ended is boring. Each subject offers a thread to be followed like an incipient stream coming down from high mountains, and which we, like miners looking for traces of gold, can follow upstream.

And we can laugh the whole time! This is as it should be, hmpf!

The sun enters the chat

Behold, the dawn! (photo by Michi)

Glad to be able to see the whole mountain above us, we followed faint and often-disappearing traces of trail in the vast scree field that guards the approach. Once on the steep hummocks of grass and rocky slopes, we only had to travel a few more minutes to our cutoff point, where we left a backpack. Michael knew a better approach to the base of the route than I had used before with Vaclav. Back in 2018, Vaclav and I had traversed to the right a long ways before turning up in gullies. This time, we moved diagonally up to the base of the impressive south face of the western summit, then easily rounded a corner to the final gully below our route. This way was definitely faster and easier! Granted, Vaclav and I had blowing clouds and mist around us, and I should be thankful that we found it at all!

Michael on the approach

I'm scrambling up the approach, obviously thinking deep thoughts (photo by Michi)

Really nice scrambling to the base...

Another scene on the approach (photo by Michi)

I took the first pitch, making a slight error in going too far right, and having to execute some interesting traversing moves around a pillar of rock to gain the main line at a notch with a bolt. I also placed a couple of cams on the route.

Michael took the second pitch, which is really nice! Up and left to a crack, then to a notch and a vertical corner crack gradually leading to easier ground. I think the pitch was entirely gear, maybe one piton along the way.

Finishing the first pitch

Michael on the interesting second pitch

I'm finishing the second pitch (photo by Michi)

We continued like this and Michael filled me in on an adventure he'd had on the route a few years before. He'd climbed it with a friend in snowy conditions, wearing mountain boots. Several sections that were easy for us today had been rather nightmarish with fresh snow on level steps on the ridge. "In the upper section, we saw the lights come on in the valleys...and then...we saw the lights turn out." At one point they spent nearly an hour chopping steps out of an icy depression blocking access to the west summit.

Whoa. Climbing can really seem like interplanetary exploration sometimes. Civilization is quite near, but also a million miles away at times like that!

Starting the third pitch (photo by Michi)

Michael with a very nice clove-hitch style anchor, below the 3rd pitch

The Karate Kid, Part 17

Pitch 5 was interesting because of some confusion with the topo. It said to stay right of the crest on grade III terrain. However, I was right on the crest, and the only possibility was to go left of the crest, and even that didn't look easy. I asked Michael to keep an eye on me, because I was going into uncharted terrain (at least, from my point of view). I traversed left on a face from a secure buttress on the crest, then worked my way back right on shallow cracks. Then I was rewarded with a fixed piton that hopefully meant I was back on the route. Nice! Then there was a fun but somewhat shallow crack to climb, which I could protect well with cams.

Nothing to worry about up here! (photo by Michi)

Enjoying the vast expanse around me and below (photo by Michi)

Soon we reached the crux pitch. It was about 5 steep meters to reach the first of three bolts, and not easy meters! I was able to slot a nut in a shallow seam, then move delicately up to a ledge. Of course I had to take a picture here, it looked really neat down to the belay stance on the crest.

Then I moved up the crack on a mix of good and rather odd holds with somewhat slippery feet. Above another bolt I was wondering whether to go right or left, and saw the last bolt up to the right (actually, this was a piton now that I think about it). I was able to clip it from an odd position -- I probably should have waited a bit. Then I went left on good side-pulls outside of the crack, and finally back right to a ledge. Nice! A few more meters and I reached the belay.

Reaching the first bolt on pitch 7 (photo by Michi)

Looking down the 7th pitch

It was great fun to stand in the sun and admire the steep wall, trying to get a few good pictures of Michael as he climbed. Unfortunately, the near-vertical wall tended to flatten out in the photos, and they don't convey the verticality of the position. The climber appears to be lazily rolling up a sloping ledge, but in reality he is on the tips of his toes, and grip strength on slippery holds is rapidly fading!

We should hire a photographer to be off to the side for such things...!

We shortened the rope and moved up to the final pitch, which Michael dispatched via a ramp going off to the left. I came up and we scrambled over to the summit, happily changing into shoes. Ahh...that feels good.

People were walking the final meters to the western summit, and they looked quite heroic in the late afternoon light. We scrambled down the ridge, happily conversing about the life of Mahatma K. Gandhi. I was reading about his life, taking a keen interest in his struggles with bramacharya. This tradition lives on in the west in very faint form in the too-easily-derided idea that sex is for procreation, and not meant to be elevated to the level of "identity." Michael laughed, saying that if anybody came along and heard our esoteric discussions, he wouldn't believe his ears!

The route -- finished! (photo by Michi)

Finally, time to get shoes on!

Hikers approach the west summit

It was also interesting that on the day we met, Michael had a conversation with the older fellow we both passed on the approach, and this man referred to the very book (Gandhi's autobiography) that I was reading, even pointing to it in the top of his backpack. And now here I am, going on and on about the details of the book.

In fact, we counted many strange correspondences and coincidences which surrounded our meeting. It is something to be thankful for, along with the simple thanks to God for safe passage on this interesting rock climb!

The key ledge traverse to gain the west summit (photo by Michi)

Here we are discussing numerology, and how astrological ideas are based on regular cycles in the human psyche, influenced by what appear to be physical objects (for example, the moon), but which have a subtle inner life of their own which meets and affects our own

We met the party we'd seen before on the west summit, and hung out there a while. Michael shared a small bottle of ginger and other spices, which was a real pick-me-up! The way down seemed to go on forever, and by the time we reached our backpack, the sky was decidedly orange, as it had been when we last saw it. The days grow short indeed...

Michi self-portrait on the west summit

On the west summit, pretty danged hungry!

Michael contemplates the waterlogged, rather sad route-book

Well, time to head down! (photo by Michi)

Irrational exuberance!

A bit of scree-skiing caused Michael's shoes to finally declare themselves dead, but they'd have to hold together for the rest of the way down. In the valley above the Wochenbrunner Alm, I finally needed some light, so he held his phone lamp up. On the road, we met two other climbers who had climbed the Schüle-Diem route on the Predigtstuhl. We were all happy with the weather, especially since there was no wind on this day.

Back at Michael's place, he made us a dinner with freshly foraged mushrooms from the forest around Bad Feilnbach. Awesome! What a great day. 8 pitches, around 1400 meters up and down. Many thanks to Michael for the company!

The last light, still a ways to go...

Time for dinner!

It was really good...also an excellent pumpkin soup to go with the mushrooms and gnocchi