Balsthal climbing and hiking

Beautiful weather forecast, so we decided to do a weekend of climbing. We enjoyed the Balsthal trip so much in November that we went back and did the same thing again. :-)

Saturday: 

train to Klus, hike up to crag, climb until we'd had enough, then hike to hotel. We probably could have rested for an hour and then climbed more, but it was getting pretty crowded.

Routes climbed (grades from the SAC topo):

• Geneigte Verschneidung 5a
• Kleiner Überhang 5b+
• Bohrhaken Übung 5c
• Zaff 5b
• Halbschräg 6a greg halb, andrea pa
• Körnige Platte Rechts 5a+
• Körnige Platte 5b+
• Kante 6a greg pa, andrea top rope pa

Sunday: 

Hike from hotel to crag, climb until it was super crowded (as in climbing gym crowded), decide spontaneously to do a hike.

Routes climbed  (grades from the SAC topo):

• Kleine Föhre (5a)
• Sunntigstüürli (5b+)
• Zwüschedüre (5a+)
• Milka (5c), Andrea top rope
• Grüeni Banane (5c+), Andrea, first three bolts only

The hike:

We were pretty sure that we'd seen people arrive from the end of the crag, so we just followed the path which runs along the foot of the cliff past the crag to see where it goes. This ends up being a narrow and not heavily used (but still easily doable) path under the cliffs. It's marked with blue markings throughout and goes past a cool moss waterfall before heading up and joining one of the Chum ufe Rogge trails. Up a bit more, now seeing people, until we hit a picnic table where we have a food break. Then onwards and upwards to the Roggenflue, along the ridge and then down to Tiefmatt, further along the ridge, another nice food break with a view before we get to Egg, past the cool ruins of Alt-Bechburg, and then up to the saddle where we had lunch during our November hike. We'd seen people heading up over the ridge here, instead of going around the small Flue, so we follow that use trail and get a nice little extra bit of ridge before rejoining the main trail and heading up onto the Höchi Flue and following that along to its end. now down the other side and fulther along to Santelhöchi where, for whatever reason, there are a ton of parked cars. Futher along the trail towards the Tüfelsschlucht. Onwards and downwards along the forest road, around the corner, past the super cool Sandloch cave and then down into the gorge. Now we're back in crowds again for the last bit through the gorge into Hägendorf and the train back to Basel.

A lot of this was repeating, in the opposite direction, a hike from November, but obviously in very different conditions. So nice to hike in the spring green, under a blue sky, with plenty of sun.

This was greg's first time climbing in his new La Sportiva Katana climbing shoes.

Track from Sunday's approach and hike:

Stats (for the hike): ~17km, 5:20, ~800m up, ~1000m down