Climbing at the Grosser Mythen

Decent weather forecast for the weekend, so we book a hotel room in Brunnen and plan two days of fun down there. The plan for today is to do some climbing on the Gross Mythen. We know that we'll start with the Adlerspitzli, but the rest we'll play by ear.

Train to Schwyz and then up, up, towards Holzegg. Unfortunately clouds start to colelct on the Gross Mythen as we're approaching, but we'll see how that goes. We leave the path/road at the hairpin and head through the woods. There's an easy to follow use trail until we get to the old snow (avalanche remains), where we turn right and head directly uphill to the foot of the cliff. This is steep but manageable. At the cliff we find the path again and follow it around the corner and to the foot of the route. We put on the gear, say goodbye to the two who've arrived behind us, and start our way up the route. This is easy climbing on less-than-ideal rock for the first couple pitches, but the rock gets better towards the top. At the top we are in a cloud, so we can't really enjoy the views, but we have a nice food break anyway. During the break we get passed by a local who's soloing the route; he continues on past us (goal: the Gelbe Wand). We had talked about continuing along a route up the Geissstock, but given the cloud and the fact that route finding isn't trivial we opt to descend instead.

The foot descent takes us along the Ruchband, an excellent T4/T5 hike just under one a big cliff. Super fun walking with cables along most of the hairy bits and some great atmosphere thanks to the clouds. At the "chamber pot" we do another food break and then start to head down, down. Here we don't manage to stay on the trail, but the scree slope is easy enough to descend and we find our way to the hut at the Holzflueli without problems. Here we pick up the trail and continue onwards and downwards into Schwyz. There the bus to Brunnen, check into the hotel, shower and rest, dinner at the pizza place next door, and then bed.

Definitely would be worth heading back to the Gross Mythen on a day with less clouds!

Gear note: this is greg's first tour with his new Black Diamond Vision climbing helmet.

Track (does not include the climb or the first part of the Ruchband):

Stats: 7:30, ~10.5km hiking, ~800m up (hiking), ~950m down (hiking)