Hohe Tauern and Marmolada, 2005

In July 2005, Thomas, Moritz, and I went for another one of our traditional mountain-outings. Admittedly, we get old, and are prone to indulge in all the luxuries a shelter 'hut' can offer (such as using the materials lift for our rucksacks, and using a taxi to avoid a 3h tedious walk up the valley...) but at least the pictures still look as if we had been doing something in the mountains.

First we ascended to the Kürsinger Hütte (very leisurely), next day went up Großvenediger (3666m), with almost no sight at the summit but without any other problems (apart from taking very long, ca 7h, which includes an extended summit rest of 1:30h). Next day, in fine weather, ascended Keeskogel (3200m, alpine I), mainly to take pictures of the scenery. The weather forecast for the next day was mixed so we abandoned all pretensions of alpinism and scratched our plans of an attempt on Hoher Geiger (the very pretty mountain in the pictures, some II+ alpine climbing, apparently) and decided to drive to the Dolomites to do the Marmolada.

Italy: great food, great coffee, decent weather. Marmolada (3344m) from the western ridge on a via ferrata (without the iron poles and ropes it would be something like III). It's also got a little bit of glacier but nothing to worry about, and a charming refugio on top (can you say red wine and polenta al forno?)

Panoramic images, stitched from Moritz's and Oli's pictures, using Hugin. Not all of them are perfect but you can get a good feel for them if you view them at natural size and scroll through.

A selection of photos from Großvenediger in Austria's Hohe Tauern. Großvenediger is a very massive and extended mountain, best appreciated from the distance (such as the top of neighbouring Keeskogel). By far one of the prettiest mountains, however, is Hoher Geiger in its Matterhorn-like proportions (though not size). Its perfect conical shape can be seen on many photos here.

(Left: leaving Großvenediger (3666m) in conditions of low visibility across the summit ridge (it drops about 100m left and right), post processed with The Gimp)

As one can see from our Marmolada pictures, we put some emphasis on convenience and 'quality of living'–after all, a credit card or Euro notes are so much lighter than a stove and all the food and wine we happily consumed... From Marmolada one has an excellent view of the Sella group, which features in probably half of the pictures, with the pyramid of Piz Boe (3100m) a distinct feature.

(Left: Oli on the via ferrata of the western ridge, ascending Marmolada (3344m))

Last modified: 2005-11-05 16:51:06+0000 by Oliver Beckstein