Grossglockner 3.798 m (12.461 ft)

Stüdlgrat: 3+/A0

FOTOGALERY

Period:
14.7. - 16.7. 2007

Trip description:

Day 1:

• During morning hours, arrival at parking lot close to Kals (1.610m) -> Stüdlhütte hut (2.801m) = 4h 30min (+1.191m)

Day 2:

• Stüdlhütte (2.801m) -> Grossglockner (3.798m) = 5h (+997m)
• Grossglockner (3.798m) -> Erzherzog-Johann hütte (3.451m) = 1h 30min (-347m)
• Erzherzog-Johann hütte (3.451m) -> Stüdlhütte (2.801m) = 1h (-650m)
• Stüdlhütte (2.801m) -> Kals (1.500m) = 2h (-1.300m)

Day 3:

• At 11:00am departure to Prague.

Never ending story...Date which suits to everyone is set, and we are all waitting for good weather forecast. Departure day was on friday and beleive it or not, final decission was made "already" on thursday, when big cloud on the internet slowly changed to smaller one. After all, we had clear sky.

You can approach Stüdlhütte by two trails, each of which has different starting point. Shorter variant starts at parking lot in Lucknerhouse, where you can get by paid road from Kals am Glockner. From here, it is only 2,5h to Stüdlhütte. Second option is via trail number 712, which we chose mainly because we had plenty of time to reach the hut - the whole day. This easy path starts on parking lot, not even 2 km up north from Kals at 1.610m. First part leads on wide, supply path, northeast, twisting up through the forest all the way till it reaches the forest limit. It goes through Mauriger Trog and up along the hill-side Freiwandspitz. Trail has some really nice views along and is a bit leaving against very frequented trail number 702B. It has also other advantage, you don't have to pay for road called Kalser Glocknerstrasse.

As mentioned before, the wide track takes us above the forest limit. After aproximately hour and a half we aproached small crossroad with bench, where you descend from wide road to small trail going steeply up the hill. You can easily track it by painted red and white marks on the rocks along. It was really hot day and highland streams with refrshing water came rewarding. As soon as you reach the higher part of the hill, the path is travesing almost the whole way untill you reach the Stüdlhütte. Nice views on south side of Glockner are everywhere, so it was good excuse for us to take pictures and have a rest pretty often.

As we didn't make reservation on Stüdlhütte (was full when we called), we tried to ask once again, while beeing there and we got nice sleeping matresses in the hallway for bargain 4 EUR/night with our Alpenverein membership. We still had plenty of time and decided to check out the aproach to Stüdlgrat, mainly the Tieschnitztal glacier, which helped us also for aclimatization.

There was no reason to hurry next morning, 4:30am did the job. Good idea was to prepare all our stuff the evening before. Full of enthusiasm we are leaving the hut around 5:30am along the well known aproach trail and are standing at the bottom of the ridge at about 1h 30min. We could see some other climbers before us, who crowded first pitch pretty well. We rather waited a bit more, till the situation calmed down. In the first pitch, we used some cams and stoppers, but afterwards, we used continous belay with carabiners attached to slings and using fixed draws along the way, but I wouldn't consider this climb as other high walls climbs, where you belay at each stand.

Climb was great, sometimes hard snow or wet rock, but no drama. We reached Frühstücksplatz in 3 hours period from the hut, had a rest and continued. If you don't reach this so called "rest place", within three hours from Stüdlhütte, you should return, othervise, you may get into troubles later. There is nice III grade climb right after the rest place. Next crucial part is close to the top marked as 3+, but personnaly, I think one step is a bit harder, but you can use the fixed clamp there, which makes it a lot easier.

Weather was nice and the whole climb is sometimes really exposed. Elevation from start point is 500m and according to guide, takes about 4,5h. Wea are standing on the top at 11:50am. There is no reason to describe the climb in detail, as plenty of info can be found, e.g. www.bergsteigen.at, but to be honest, we didn't really need it as climb is pretty straight forward.

But, on the summit, we had no idea what is waitting in front of us. First surprise was on the narrow and exposed ridge between Gross and Kleine Glockner, where two crowds got stuck. One comming from Klein Glockner via normal route and other leaving the summit of Grossglockner. People coming from normal route are mainly tourists, not climbers and that is why this airy exposure makes problems to some of them, which is causing delays. To wait there wouldn't make any sense, as the row is never ending, so we slowly with regard to safety, made our way through. As soon as I wanted to rejoice, we made it, new crowd appears in front of us, while descending Kleineglockner. We had to wait for almost an hour, because some other guys were having problems with descend. Finally, Thomas had an idea, top rope down around them, which saved us. I don't want this to sound arrogant, but my opinion, people without proper gear and experience shouldn't take these trips. It only causes problems not only to them, but also the others around.

From the last fixed belays, the descend is easy. It takes only while to get to Erzherzog-Johann-Hütte. Little rest and we kept on going. First via ferata below the hut and on the Ködnitztal glacier afterwards. Time 4pm on Stüdlhütte, where we packed remaining gear, which wasn't necesary for the climb itself and after longer break we started our descend back to our cars.

FOTOGALERY

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