Plaisir climbing in the Zugspitze region

Lowish grades, good protection, great views and marmots - what's not to love?

After my training and high alpine touring in the Pitztal Jochen, whom you may know from the article on the Watzmann traverse on this site, picked me up on his way from Italy via Innsbruck and we made our way to Ehrwald / Austria. From there we first took the cable car half way up and hiked the rest of the way to the Coburg hut in the Mieming range. The hut is situated beautifully right by the Drachensee in a sort of a bowl of 2.000-2.500m peaks and is well known to have great alpine multi pitch climbing with solid protection.

Our plan was to climb a few of these routes with lowish grades in the next few days and also do a via ferrata or two if time and the weather would allow. I had selected a few routes up to the UIAA 5 difficulty with 5 to 8 eight rope lengths - enough to keep us busy for the three days we would be there.

While hiking up we discussed our plans again and already knew that the weather would turn on us during the second day and that the whole third day might be plagued by rain. So we decided to skip the “reminder” session in the small crag right next to the hut we had planned for the next morning to make the most of the day.

In the morning of the first real day we hiked up to the base of the first route: a grade 4 seven length ascent almost up to the peak of the Hinterer Tajakopf called “Take it easy”. As we started our climb it became apparent that this was truly just fun: Easy enough, well protected, great weather and stunning views. Reaching the top we checked the clock and decided that there was more than enough time to hike back down and do “Love Story” just 50 m left of “Take it Easy” - again pure Plaisir at 4+ and follow a cool ridge most of the way. To finish off the day we did the short Coburger Via Ferrata (difficulty D/E) to the summit of the Hinterer Tajakopf and scrambled down the other side back to the hut (which we reached just in time for dinner).

As promised the weather looked gloomy on the morning of day two and we chose to try to get up a more difficult route (“Gefrässiges Murmeltier”, five lengths, 5+) as far as we could before the rain would start and then abseil down again. Two other climbers had the same idea and we left the hut with them. Standing at the base of the climb it started to rain lightly but we started up the wall anyways. This route is much steeper than what we did the day before with harder climbing but still good protection.

I led the first pitch which started out with the hardest moves right off the ground (always a great feeling if you struggle to even get on the wall...). Things eased up for pitch 2 which Jochen led. We saw the other guys do pitch three, a slabby, travesey thing with few hand holds - a “just trust your feet” kind of pitch. I led the pitch with the rain starting to come down in earnest - just what you need on a slab. Belaying Jochen to the stance things felt properly alpine: Reasonably hard climbing in rainy and cold conditions at 2.000m plus - Honestly I was grinning from ear to ear.

We decided to abseil and got back to the ground and towards the hut just before it started to rain even more. In the afternoon there was a break in the rain which we used to do some two pitch and single pitch climbing at the crag behind the hut. All in all a great day - even with the rain.

Day three delivered as promised: Rain almost the whole day and a sharp drop in temperatures. In the morning I got onto the Tajakante via ferrata but turned around after 50m due to the rock being super slippery. After that we decided to try to get up on the Ehrwalder Sonnenspitze using the normal way. The route is severe scrambling and low grade climbing (maybe grade 2) with enough exposure to make the prospect of slipping very uninviting. We made it up tow about 100m below the summit (passing seven stances) ropeless and in mountain boots before the rain shut us down and we decided to downclimb. Jochen called it “good training” - I guess so! So in the end no serious roped climbing on that day but fun nonetheless.

The next morning we hiked down under overcast skies reflecting on the last few days. Even though the weather did not allow us to do all the routes we had earmarked we still got quite a bit of solid and fun climbing done. I might be tempted to go back to try some of the longer, harder routes at some point in the future but for now I can only recommend this area to climbers looking for some fun in the alpine without being scared the whole time.

Adventurers: Jochen and Bengt