Winter Alpinism

On a sunny and not too cold morning I was waiting to be picked up at the autobahn to Garmisch. With me was a backpack loaded with all kind of stuff promising a fun day - crampons, ice axes, climbing harness, and a rope.

Achim had the idea to do a winter ascent of the Jubiläums ridge that day. The Jubiläums ridge is an 8km long traverse between the Zugspitze and the Alpsitpze, Germany's highest mountains. On the pic below you can see the long ridge and the various small towers waiting for me, Achim , and another Flo.

"Here you leave safety area - alpine dangers" the sign below says. Ahead of us were 6 hours of easy climbing on glazed and icy rock, where the tough sections were luckily protected with a ferrata.

Some impression from the climbing:

At the beginning it was still an easy and exposed hike, but after some time we had to use our ice axes

and climb in icy rock sections, which was especially tough for me since I wasn't used to mixed terrain. However, the other two guys were experienced and felt comfortable climbing with crampons.

But luckily they were also patient and in the end I learned it, too.

On this pic you can see Achim and behind him looming the next tower to be climbed, one of many still to come.

After lots kilometers of climbing more'n'more distance came between us and the Zugspitze...

... and finally we made the entire traverse.

Now we just had to get all the way down from the Alpspitze, as quick as possible because the daylight was fading away.

We just got down the Alpspitze North face via another ferrata as it turned dark. Unfortunately, it took another two or three hours walking all the way down on the ski slopes. Finally, after a long day we got back to civilization and enjoyed pizza and wheat beer ;)