Ari and Pedro went to do the Hochstuhl Klettersteig in the morning and Johannes and I went in search of the multipitch climbing route to the Klagenfurter Spitze. We’d downloaded a topo and some vague instructions. We hunted around for hours walking up and down the scree slopes. I spotted Ari and Pedro on the klettersteig at one point but not the beginning of our multipitch route.
Later we had one more go splitting up and searching further up the valley at the base of the cliffs. Suddenly I heard “nachkommen, a German climbing command to let another climber know that he/she can begin climbing. I knew we must be close and saw a climber far up on the ridge belaying. It was too late in the day to climb but we noted our positions and headed back down into the valley collecting our heavy back packs that we’d jettisoned there. We walked back to the hut and had something there. Ari and Pedro turned up shortly after as we were preparing to go and find them. It sounded like the klettersteig was quite nice so we decided we’d do it quickly.
We left quite late at 3:30pm-ish, walk-jogging down the forest road to the intersection in tracks and over the scree to the beginning of the ferrata, arriving 20 minutes after leaving the hut. We continued the quick pace clipping an unclipping along the steel ropes. I’d organised to check in with Ariadna and at 5pm I used my small climbing walkie-talkie to radio to her at the hut. They worked surprisingly well despite the hut being off in the distance across the valley. We continued. The ferrata has sections that are unprotected where you shouldn’t fall and the whole thing has a bit of an alpine feel to it. It is alpine.
Johannes slowed on the second half of the climb, perhaps due to the lack of calories due to his inferior choice of lunch – soup. I waited for him at the summit of Hochstuhl (2236m) sitting near some others on the rocky summit ridge. The other two women were speaking Slovenian and had come up for an evening stroll from the much higher Slovenian hut just across the border. The ridge marked the border to Slovenia and once Johannes arrived we crossed the border and started jogging down the rocky path towards the Bielschitzasattel, the far saddle where the path crosses back to Austria.
I went ahead and radioed Ari again from the saddle at 7 pm, this time with our desires for dinner at the hut. The kitchen had closed at 7 pm but we hurried back to the hut all the same, hoping to get some warm food still, meeting Ari outside. Success, Pedro had been working his sales magic and the cook begrudgingly agreed to one last order. We ate a delicious Rosti and Kaiserschmarrn and drank our wheat beer in the fresh but still sunny evening. A nice end to a day that had started off a bit frustrating.
