8c MP "hang-dog" solo by Fabian Buhl

Fabian Buhl, a worldclass boulderer and trad climber, spent three days by himself "hang-dogging" solo Alex Huber's 10 pitches of Wetterbock 8c in Austria. In reality, this ascent must have been one of the greatest challenges accomplished in the history of rock climbing. In practice, the 25-year-old, tied in a rope at the belay , just started to onsight the 8c using a modified Grigri to pull out rope. - You fix your rope on the belay, then feed the rope trough your self belay device and start climbing, its attached to your harness. It feeds pretty smooth, after about 20 m you need to get the rope weight to the wall, otherwise it will feed automatically and you have a lot of loose rope in the system. Then you climb to the belay, fix the rope, then rappel down, get the gear out. Jumar up and start the next pitch, so each pitch is a lot of effort, because you have to climb it twice I wanted a Challenge, I mean if you know the route from summer, you know holds and also the way between the bolts. For me it was all new beside some pics and a short clip and Alex said its nearly impossible, so I was sky! And I am really happy for the challenge, without him I would have never tried. When Alex Huber told me about his new line at the Wetterbockwand I was blown away as it offers steep bullet limestone, is very runout and in a pretty remote area. Months later, I started thinking about a possible solo winter ascent. I knew it was going to be very tough. Alex was skeptic about my idea, but supported me from the beginning. Along with him and Lukas, I explored the approach and stashed some gear near the wall. Not only the climbing is difficult, the steep snowy approach has a high risk of avalanches and takes about 4 hours. Most of it is possible on skis, but the last 350 vertical meters of the couloir are way to steep; it's an interesting mix of climbing and hip deep snow digging. But a full-on winter experience was exactly what I wanted. I was willing to go all in to realize my dream. As usual Alex's bolts were far apart, after the first bigger falls I started to trust my self-belay system again and did not care anymore. The only thing I worried about was the next belay, the air mile collection grew steadily. Sometimes I spend 40 min in the runout climbing back and forth, not knowing my way and trying to find the path of least resistance. Deicing holds with my free hand or cleaning snow from ledges. In the end luck was definitely on my side in some situations and I could realise the first repeat from the Wetterbockwand 8c at Hoher Göll North face. Waking up in the cold each day at 4:30 am and climbing until it got dark, was a new experience and it felt good to see how my body works in such a situation. I was 100% focused at all times and felt confident, I did not question any decision I made and never felt tired. Only after reaching the save trail to the car, the adrenaline dropped and I was overcome by a crazy fatigue.