The plan for the weekend was to go to the Grassenbiwak on Saturday and then climb the Klein Titlis south face to get to the Titlis (there's a description of this in one of Dani Silbernagel's books). We started this last year, but Greg wasn't feeling great, so we turned around during the hike up to the Grassenbiwak.
Saturday
We take the bus to Herrenrüti, follow the trail up the valley a bit and then turn off and start heading up, up. It's a lovely blue-sky day and not overly warm... good hiking. Up, up we go, at first through the woods, but then more open, switching to the blue-white path at the place we turned around last time, and then up, up some more with great views under the towering east wall of the Titlis. We're definitely noticing that this is the first trip of the season with heavy packs. We do a food break at around 1900m and then follow the path across onto the glacier moraine. Up, up some more along the moraine and then we hit the first snow. The rest of the way to the ridge is a mix of kicking steps in steep snow, scrambling, and normal blue-white hiking. It's not always trivial to find the trail (some markings probably under snow, no visible trail because of the snow) and the snow->rock transitions are occasionally tricky, but we make steady progress. The last bit to the ridge even has some cables in it (that makes the route finding easy!). Once on the ridge the route finding gets easy (<smile>) and we continue on to the biwak. There are clear, and relatively fresh looking, tracks coming down from the Grassen so we are happy to discover that we are, at least at the moment, alone.
The biwak is super cozy and well equipped, so we get the stove going, boil some water, and have coffee/tea and enjoy the views along with our last sandwiches. It's a nice, quiet late afternoon. As it gets later some weather starts to come in and by the time we do dinner there's thunder and lightning on the other side of the Titlis and it's almost raining. We don't get a sunset, but there are at least some nice cloudscapes. During the night it rains pretty heavily and we get some more thunder and lightning; it's fun to lay warm and cozy in the hut and hear all that going on outside. :-)
Track from Saturday:
Stats: 5:29, 8.9km, ~1600m up
Sunday
We're in a cloud when we wake up. It's still mostly there after breakfast, so we do a post-breakfast nap to give the sun some time to do its job. By the time we start packing up at 8:30 it's cleared up some, though the Titlis itself is still mostly covered. We've decided that doing the original route isn't a great idea since the route-finding is supposed to be tricky and being in a cloud would just be too much (plus the approach yesterday was a bit more adventurous than anticipated and it's still early season in our heads), so when we set out it's towards the Grassen (the destination for our first self-organized Hochtour eight years ago). We head down the ridge from the hut to the glacier, rope up, and the follow the tracks up, up towards the Grassen.
The ascent track turns off and seems to head more directly towards the Stössensattel, and the descent track is a direttissima, so Andrea gets to do some trail stamping as we zigzag up, up towards the peak. The snow is a bit too soft, but otherwise conditions are good and we make our way without problems to the ridge and follow the well-work track the rest of the way to the peak. Unsurprisingly, there are people up here. :-) After a food break and some view enjoyment on the peak (the Titlis is still largely in clouds), we start back along the ridge to follow the normal route back to the Sustlihütte. Easy along the ridge, through the pass, down the steep bit through the rocks (there's still snow here, but apparently not as much as last time), then down, down until we get to the hut.
At the hut we stop for some tea and cake and enjoy the views and the spectacle of the crowds doing the Kanzelgrat before starting our way down the Leiterliweg to the road and the bus stop. We've still got some time, so we hang out by the river, enjoy our last sandwiches, and then get on the bus to start the long trip back to Basel.
This wasn't what we had planned, but it was a definitely a very nice plan B.
Track from Sunday:
Stats: ~4:00, 6.7km, 420m up, ~1150m down
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