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@Stonehedge
Well that was a big fucking day! South > North traverse of Hochwilde/L'altissima on the Austrian/Italian border.
Started off at 5am below freezing and under a bright moon and finished the day in hot sunshine. Lots of glacier travel with a dump of fresh snow making progress a little slow. Some nice short ice pitches to get up and over a massive bergschrund (50m+ deep!) Followed by about 2.5hours/500m of extremely exposed but pretty easy grade II climbing. We had to abandone our plan to climb Anakogel on the way down because gurglerferner has lost 30m of thickness this summer and the side of the mountain was thawing and falling away. We went up the whole length of Langtalferner and down the whole length of gurglerferner on the way back.
Probably the last climb of the summer season.
Highlights: setting ice screws to belay my guide over the bergshrund...felt like the first moment I didn't have imposter syndrome in a committed situation. Finding the tracks of a wolf in the snow. The views. Being able to take on this route at all.
Lowlights: 10 hours to cover 18km with an average HR of 130bpm. I'm absolutely, completely, broken both above and below the waist. Loss of glacier ice...it impossible to convey how bleak things are up here this season.
Will link my insta when I've posted some photos.