Journal



15. Nov. 2011, 12:18 Uhr

Chalchschijen is calling BD Athlete Jvan Tresch... again!

Last year we were chased out of the wall by hair-raising conditions with 35cm new snow and avalanches. Nevertheless, this sick wall unleashed something in us we couldn't hold back and this gave us the motivation to try it one more time - but this time for real!

So this year, the original team made out of Jürgen Bissig and me was joined by Pascal Siegrist as the man for high difficulties and Robert Boesch as the photographer. Spiri and I were psyched to the very maximum, so we racked up the gear including food and dragged as much as we could all the way up again on the exposed and extremely strenuous hike along the Maderaner Valley to the bivouac site below the wall. The next day we fixed all the previous pitches to the highest reached point and descended again. Our plan was to get back to the wall one week later with the rest of the gear - everyone was ready to rumble!

But then the signal light turned red! The weather forecast turned from good to bad. Shit, not again!!! The inconsistent weather during the whole summer didn't let us drop the clutch for one single attempt and forced us to wait for another 2 months...

We had already given up hope, but then suddenly the long-awaited window of a high-pressure system showed up. And one day later we found ourselves back in the bivouac, psyching up for the wall! On the next morning the necessary evil of big wall climbing started: Jumaring up the now turned delicate fixed ropes, hauling the massive weight up the wall, to the highest point and setting up the portaledges.

Everything seemed to be more than perfect. But the difficulties of the next pitch was so high (8a), that it took us a while and the first doubts started to come up. Meter by meter we climbed, hooked and bolted our way up, it seemed to be endless. Suddenly we arrived at one point where our plan didn't work out properly. Infront of us an absolutely blank wall and no way of free climbing it! This forced us to take plan B: trying to top out on the summit by following a pretty steep and weird crack system to the right.

To our own surprise we actually made it to the summit in perfect conditions and even along a natural line, where everything went quite fast. This gave us the opportunity to work out the upper part of the route and to freeclimb some of the pitches up to 8a+ the following days.

The weather was amazing and it only rained on one day, but we stayed dry in the overhangs and even found a way to fill up some water bottles with a little dripping stripe.

On the 6th day Robert Boesch jümared up to the portaledges with 4 fresh beers in the bag. So we had a big party on the 14th night distributed over 4 years, full of ups and downs and we finally celebrated our first ascent which we want to redpoint next year:

"Out of Space" 8a+ (5.13c) / A1, 605m (18 pitches)

Photos