Scrambling on the Brüggler and the Chöpfler

A hike to take advantage of late-season warm weather.

Train to Ziegelbrücke, quick hike to the gondola station in Niederurnen, gondola up to Morgenholz and then we start hiking. Gently up the valley, then turning and doing more real up, up, up on a good red-white path to the Wanifurggel. Food break in the pass, and then following the blue-white path along the ridge.

The first bit of this is easy following the ridge, just under the cliff. Then down, down along a bit of muddy terrain through the woods until we get to the climbing routes, then right and up, up, along the nicely routed trail that takes us back to the ridge, including some good scrambling (note: wear a helmet here if there are others underway). Once on the ridge a mix of hiking and scrambling, always following the makred path, on good rock, until we get to the peak. This trail maybe has too many chains and other helpers on it, but I imagine that they are nice if people are doing a foot descent after topping out the climbing, and it's nice to have the chain available, just in case, on the one quite exposed 5m scrambling bit just before the top. Nice food break with views and pictures (a large group of younger hikers shows up from the other direction when we're almost done, but they luckily aren't super loud), and then we continue along the ridge.

The first bit is easily down through not-so-steep grass, and then at the next saddle we follow the use trail which leads us towards the Chöpfler. This one is not marked and doesn't have chains, but the rock is good, it's generally not super exposed, the route finding is easy, and it's just super scrambling and hiking. Just before the peak we hit a blue-white trail coming up from the left (we'll take this down). We scramble the last bit to the peak (instead of taking the easier trail), have a short picture break (it's gotten quite windy), and then head back down the trail. This takes a nice route down through the cliff face, past some nice limestone formations, down, down. Towards the bottom a Rega helicopter flies slowly by, it looks like they're looking for someone. We take a quick snack break and watch what is either a very realistic drill or an actual rescue (though who knows what people were doing to the west of us) before continuing down, down into the valley.

We opt to head down the valley towards Niederurnen (instead of through the saddle and down to Innerthal) and follow a nice red-white trail to Lochegg, where we start our way down, down, towards town The last few km of this are, unfortunately, on road (some quite steep road), but we make good time and manage to get to the bus stop 2 minutes before the bus arrives to start us on the trip back to Basel.

Track:

Stats: 18.6km, 6:55, 1300m up and 1700m down. The track includes a straight line which is the gondola ride up, this is not included in the stats.

Climbing in Grandval

The plan is to go to Grandval and climb the the trad route "La reve de wilderness" from Keep Wild Jura.

After some public transportation fun (trains aren't running between Delemont and Moutier, so we have to take the bus and then walk to Grandval) we end up at the bottom of the bolted multi-pitch routes (this is to the left of Cafe Dancing, which we climbed last time) and head around the corner to where the route should start. On with all the gear and then G starts up. This doesn't last long: the rock quality is terrible and he can't find anywhere he's willing to climb, despite looking around for a while. That's enough to suck the motivation out of him to do the clean climbing, so we pack the cams and stuff away and head back around the corner to do the bolted route La Cigale (5b, 5a, 4c+, 5c+, 4c, 5a, 4a... grades from the SAC Tourenportal). This is really nice climbing on good rock (yay!) and nice views,  and is, easy and flowy aside from the 5c+ pitch (which has a bit of spicy slab). There are plenty of other people around, but the two groups we catch up to both let us pass, so we never end up waiting very long.

Up top we pack everything away, have a nice lunch break while enjoying the good weather and views, and then head back down to Grandval to grab the train to Moutier and start our trip home.

A lovely day of Jura climbing. Grandval is a good one to keep in mind for the winter months: not too high, south facing, easy approach, everything one wants. :-)

Late season Grimsel climbing

 Taking advantage of the good weather to get in some late-season climbing up near the Grimsel pass.

Saturday

The usual early-morning story to get the train-train-train-bus connection up to Grimsel. The Basel→Spiez train is, unfortunately, going to Milano, so it’s completely crazy. Ah well, since we board in Basel we can actually get seats.

Once in Chunzentannlein we find a likely looking place to set up camp later, drop the bags with the camping stuff, and then head up to the rock.

Sector Crow, Batzi und Bitzi: 4a 4a 4c 4b 5b 4b 3c 5a 5a 5b+ 5c. We simul-climbed up to the 5b, then again until the 5b+. G did the 5b+ and 5c as one pitch. Total climbing time ~1:20. The simul-climbing went really well and all of the rest of it was easy except the last couple of bolts on the 5c, which were scary slab. To get to the foot descent, we crossed over to the last pitch of the neighboring route and then fought through the bush along a faint path from there until getting to the descent trail for Fliegende Teppich.

After a break we headed down a bit and did some scouting to find the routes for Sunday. Since it was still super early we decided to do the first couple pitches of Ameisenrennen - 5c, 5b. Since those were easy, we also did the 6a that followed (A lead). That was also pretty straightforward (and very well protected), but we wanted to save some juice for Sunday, so we abseiled down and went back to set up camp.

Back down at our stuff we do some more scouting around and find a much better camping site near a crazy boulder. The rest of the afternoon is resting and playing on the boulder until it’s time to make dinner and then go to bed.

Sunday

After a nice breakfast we pack up the camping stuff and set out just before 8:00. We stash the camping bags a bit off the trail and then head up, up to the beginning of Letzter Tango (which is next to Ameisenrennen).

Sector Dom, Letzter Tango: 5a+, 4a, 5b, 5c+, 5a, 4a, 3a, 3a, 5a, 5a, 5a+, 5a, 5c, 5a+, 5b+, 5a+

Lovely route, very efficient climbing. The route took just under 3.5 hours. We did simulclimbing through the 4a, 3a, 3a, 5a with A first then switching to G first (he had all the gear by that point) for the 5a and 5a+ (the 5a would have worked too, but he only had 5 express left at that point and wasn’t sure that would work). Then we switched back to pitches for the last bits.

General note: the grading on this and Ameisenrennen was very generous. None of the pitches felt particularly difficult.

After the climb we packed away the gear and enjoyed some food and the views from up top then set off along a nicely marked (with cairns and the occasional yellow marking) use trail down. The view out across the slabs and water flows that lead up towards the Baechlitalhuette was just fantastic, and we got to walk through that awesome landscape. We have tons of time, so we do another break on a comfy slab to enjoy the views and sun. After the break we join the trail to the Baechlitalhuette and head back down, pick up the camping gear, and head back to where we camped for a coffee/tea and cookies break and more rest (as well as a bit more bouldering for G) while waiting for the 16:30 bus.

The bus is super full (as expected), but we have plenty of time in Meiringen for a kebap before starting the train portion of the journey home.

A walk along the Wiese

Better weather than forecast and we both wanted to get out of the house, so we went for a nice walk along the Wiese to the border.

Stats: 2:10, 10.2 km, 33m up ;-)