Vertical-Life
Huber's summer
| Alexander Huber on Feuertaufe |
| Guido Unterwurzacher on Feuertaufe |
| The pitches (UIAA X+ = 8b+, X- = 8a/a+) |
| Alexander free soloing Grand Capucin |
| Alexander free soloing Grand Capucin |
Huber's summer = 3 adventures
1. Feuertaufe
In the summer of 2008 Alexander Huber and the Tyrolean Guido Unterwurzacher opened a new route on the South Face of the Sonnwand, a high face close to the Tyrolean village Lofer. Self-evidently they opened the route ground up without any prior reconnaissance from above. The style of the route is as bold as possible
The result is an absolute highlight, a first class adventure in highest quality limestone on a permanently slightly overhanging wall. After three days of training in the route during this summer, Guido and Alexander successfully redpointed the route on the 31st of July.
The second pitch of Feuertaufe holds the grade F8b+/5.14a, nevertheless the main difficulties of the route have to been seen in the mental challenges of the route. On the crux you climb with the bolt more than four meters below the feet and a failure results in a fall of more than twelve meters. But also all the other pitches
are interesting and challenging one has to know how to place gear! The main obstacle, one has to face when attempting Feuertaufe, is not the final redpoint-ascent, but the first encounter with the route when you climb into the unknown terrain. A real adventure.
2. Sansara
Sansara is a six pitches long alpine sportclimb on the East Face of the Grubhorn, which is also situated close to the Tyrolean village Lofer. Alexander opened the route in spring and finally redpointed the route on the 25th of June. The route is characterized by its three roofs the first one with eight meters being the biggest and hardest (8b+) and the last one being a 6-meter-roof with a perfect splitter finger crack. Beautiful and spectacular.
3. Grand Capucin Free Solo
With its 3838 meters Grand Capucin is not among the highest mountains of the . On the other hand, this granite tower is the most difficult summit of the and therefore it´s a very sought after goal for the climbers. With the first ascent of its East Face in 1951, Walter Bonatti was ahead of the time this and the high quality granite made Grand Capucin both famous and popular as well.
In the beginning of July Alexander Huber went to Grand Capucin in order to explore the possibilities to free solo this summit and he found a very doable way along the classic Swiss Route with difficulties not exceeding the grade F6b But the challenge of free soloing Grand Capucin is not over by reaching the summit one has also to come down that thing! Since the Swiss Route is the easiest freeclimb on Grand Capucin, there is no other solution than climbing back down the same route!
The 400 meters of the Swiss Route start with a 100 meters high couloir, which is followed by 300 meters of pure granite. After the reconnaissance Alexander was familiar with the route and particularly with all the hard sections, nevertheless he still had to wait for the right moment. There was still too much snow on the mountain so that some cracks still had been either iced up or wet. Finally, on the 5th of August, everything had been perfect. It was quite a cold day, still the temperatures had been just all right and the whole route was perfectly dry. Alexander started at 10 a.m. and climbed to the summit in no more than 59 minutes. After a short break of five minutes he went back down the route and, some 2 hours and 50 minutes after he left the couloir, he was back down. The final downclimb through the couloir and a huge jump over the gaping bergschrund brought him back to the horizontal world of Glacier Géant
Photos: www.heinzzak.com