Pontresina
Ice climbing festival at the "Corn" on Diavolezza and Piz Palü...
The real end of the ice climbing season was held this weekend, the third ice climbing festival at the Diavolezza-Corn in Pontresina. Highlight there was the team competition called "Team rush" where the competitors have to climb the 100 meter high icefall as fast as possible. The comp is intense, not only because of the elevation of the spot some meters below 3000m. I teamed up with Markus Bendler to climb the team rush. Already at the qualification we placed 2nd after the locals Romano Salis from Pontresina and Julian Zanker from St. Moritz. In the finals the routes have had the full length of the Corn, the tops where placed around 100m above ground. We pushed hard and climbed the 200 meters in total in 6:53 min, but the locals even had a faster rush. Both have been prepared well for this comp, but they earned their victory. They reached the tops within 6:22 min, 31 sec faster than us. Third place went to the winners of 2008, Jack Müller and Ron Koller in 7:25 min.
More Info: www.ready2climb.com
On sunday it was time to give workshops for the participators of the event. After that, Markus and me stayed one more night at the Diavolezza hut to do the impressive Piz Palü on the next day. We have been the only ones on the summit of the 3900m hight Palü this day. The strong Föhn wind and the poor visibilty on top forced all other groups to return back below the top. Due to the bad weather forcast Markus and me did another team rush, after 2:40 h we stood at the summit of Piz Palü. As a reward we skied down the 2000 vertical meters mostly on powder snow (Variant via Furcla Arlas and Arlas valley).
