Slovenia: Kristan North Face

approaching a 400m face. high quality limestone, confusing routefinding, and lots of blank snow-on-slab cruxes. The compacted and transformed snow from october made for perfect neve conditions on the face, sticky one swing ice. some of it even took good screws. 

 

once on the face, we soloed steep neve through improbable passages and traverses to work our way up.

we finally got out the rope for the crux, a 10m traverse on blank rock slab.

Anze led a huge simul-block through an ice runnel.

leading a surprisingly hard slab pitch on the ridgecrest. photo Anze Klaric

photo Anze Klaric

 

on the summit

photo Anze Klaric

  

the mountain next door, a wierd sea of choss and neve.

 downclimbing to "the dick" photo Anze Klaric

rapelling off of "the dick".

Anze rapelling next to "the dick"

a phallocentric composition proudly displaying:   The Dick!

Slovenia: Vršič - Šitna glava ridge

Anze Klaric with the Alpine selfie.

This was the part of our Alpine Mentors trip where we got to pretend to be Slovenians, with the help of actual Slovenians, by climbing some really incredible Slovenian mountains. By this time I was sick, but decided to suck it up and get out anyway.  I was paired with Anze Klaric, the youngest member of the Slovenian mentorship program at 20 years old. He's a talented climber, but was also getting over an illness so we had similar goals in mind: Hard climb, minimal slogging on approach. Between coughing fits and spitting phlegm we managed to get up some really good routes, and it was a joy and an honor to climb with him in his home range. Lets just say that our senses of humor aligned well also: many a dick joke was made...

  

scrotum clenching overhanging choss on the crux lead.  Anze Klaric.

you can go around the roof at 5.2 or up at A3.  easy choice here. Anze Klaric

gendarmes. photo Anze Klaric

an interesting corner-groove that Anze led. It proved to be surprisingly technical.

  

following the corner.  photo Anze Klaric

 
 
 

photo Anze Klaric

photo Anze Klaric

Slovenia: Vršič - Tamar

Anze, Nik, and I all team soloed some ice in this beautiful valley.

Slovenia: Slap Peričnik

Photo:  Aleš Česen

With a cold snap at low elevations in the Julian Alps, Waterfall ice was in all-time condition in Slovenia. The weather in the high alpine still was bad, but down low, at 800m (2600ft), rare waterfalls were forming. In the Triglav region, one of the main tourist attractions is the beautiful Slap Peričnik (Slap means waterfall.) According to the locals, once each four or five years it forms for a week or two in the coldest part of winter, where the main cascade remains unfrozen as it courses over two limestone caves. The curtain walls are sometimes climbable. You need to go on a cold or cloudy day to escape the incessant hangfire.

Photo:  Aleš Česen

 
Aleš Česen had been through the Slovenian mentorship program, and he served as our mentor for the day. Kurt and I had allready met him in Alaska, and it was great to get out climbing with him. His resume of hard climbs in the Karakoram and Himalaya would suggest extreme ambition, but he came across as quiet, thoughtful, and relaxed.  

Photo:  Aleš Česen

Photo:  Aleš Česen

Aleš bouldering an arch on the descent.

The right side has infinite mixed potential. Bolting is probably out of the question, as the area is in a protected natural park and a high profile spot for tourists. Trad-mixed in ground up style would be cool, but with soft rock and almost no cracks it would be one for the psycho-bold.

Slovenia: Desni Slap at Vršič

Topping out a mixed variation to Desni Slap. I put up a (likely) first ascent, ground up and onsight, M7+. I had to pound pins on lead from some difficult stances in the roof.  I'm used to doing this type of climbing with bolts and fruitboots, but instead I had 4 cams, pitons, and double boots on for the day. Making this improbable line go required a great deal of up-and-down climbing, faith and effort.

Nik makes a foul face for foul conditions.

Aleš points to the days objective, huge waterice.

  

Erik leading a good pitch lower on the route.

Meanwhile Nik and Kurt did the central flow.

  

Austria: Lienz Dolomites

The North Face of the Hochstadl

Nik Mirashemi leads some ice on our first day. We had to bail and move the cars for avelanche Control.

On our next day, Erik and Nik got to climb with the legendary German alpinist, Ines Papert. She put up a hard trad-mixed first ascent next door while Kurt and I checked out an interesting multipitch M8 on bluegreen schist near the Austrian town of Matrei. I managed to onsight both pitches.

Ines, Steve, Nik, Erik and I took advantage of the first good weather to get up into the higher part of the Austrian Dolomites. We bungled the approach to the Hochstadl, hiked 500m too high and wound up at a semi-open hut. We started a fire and in the -15C temps it took a while to get our motivation back. We ended up doing some chosseneering on an interesting unnamed ridgeline and summit. It was a day of shortroping, scrambling, and tiptoeing in some really cold conditions, but with great views.

  

Ines was trying to stay in the sunlight.

  
  

Climbing through a chunderful tunnel of choss with Ines and Nick

  

Cabin life. Hollowed out of a Greenschist boulder..