Because Hansi a.k.a. "the dishwasher"
isn't always home and I have his sweet BMW ride,
I could finally go back to one of my favorite places in the Northern Alps, the limestone cathedrals of the Reiteralm. In particular, our interest lies on the right face in the lower picture, the Alpawand.
We, that is, me and Achim, already climbed a bunch of routes on this wall but there were still two routes missing. From the online topo, these routes sounded interesting, prestigeous, and fun! On the first day we climbed Earth and Heaven on the central pillar of the wall.
Here you can see Achim easily climbing somewhere in the lower pitches.
And here I am desperately squeezing through a narrow chimney... I will never love those.
Unfortunately, I slipped off a wet hold in the 10th pitch and landed 5m further down on a slab with razor sharp rills :( Here's the result:
Although my arm was quite burning I could continue climbing on this wonderful route and we enjoyed the soaking deep and void underneath our feet in the upper pitches.
Here I am traversing above an impressive roof towards the last crux pitch.
And then you could really feel gravity pulling you down! Here you see me in the last 6c pitch with a couple of hundred meters nothing-but-air below me... a great feeling to be back in the Alps after one year of Canadian sport crags!
Well, finally we topped out and somehow also found our way down again to our shady bivouac next to a cold creek.
It was another impressive climb and luckily my arm still worked although I had this nasty fall the day before. But somehow my muscles weren't used to 30 pitches of climbing, only to short and hard sport routes. I fought desperately...
... but still Achim had to pull me up the second half of the route. Luckily, he was in shape. Nevertheless, it was another great climb on a fantastic day. So we walked back to the car and left the Alpawand behind us in the sunset.
I am glad I'm finally back to multipitch climbing!
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