In the glow of our headlamps, we stumble sleepily towards the start of the route. To our left, the Totenkirchl, pitch-black, soars into the night sky with its 600-metre-high west face. Ahead of us lies an even larger pyramid: the Kleine Halt. With its 800-metre-high north-west face, it is the largest wall in the Kaiser Mountains. Our small 15-litre rucksacks sit lightly on our shoulders, but sweat is still beading on our foreheads.
Grey on grey, bleak, dreary! For us climbers, the colour has a completely different meaning: grey is hope, grey is a zest for life, grey is fulfilment. Grey on grey – these are the most beautiful days!
“It’s going to be a brutally hot August day if it’s already this muggy,” says Christoph. He has just stopped to cool his sweaty face in the ice-cold water of the Mirakelbründel, a spring by the side of the path.
Text: Gebi Bendler | Photos: Michael Meisl
Without a word, I follow his lead. Christoph and I met in 2013 in theWilder Kaiser whilst on a mountaineering guide training course. Since then, we have been bound by a friendship that has taken us, as a rope team, from the ‘Koasa’ all the way to the Himalayas. Christoph is one of Austria’s finest alpinists.
With every step we take towards it, the shadowy north-west face becomes more and more impressive. Last night, from the terrace of the Hans-Berger-Haus, it looked much more inviting as the setting sun bathed it in a warm glow. The sunsets up there on the terrace are something quite special – kitsch, certainly, but also linked to a sense of home that is strangely moving. Home. What is it? A grand, overused word, perhaps? I grew up here and always love coming back. Back to a paradise of memories from which no one can drive you away. And the terrace is full of memories.
The starting and finishing point for many climbing adventures and – even more significantly – countless social encounters. One person you almost always come across here is Silvia Huber, the ‘Wild Empress’, as she is known with a touch of irony. She has been running the Mountain Lodge/Hut since 1990, a business previously managed by her father, Adi Huber. Born in Styria, she has spent every summer here since she was six. She is not only a fixture of the Kaiser Mountains, but also part of Kufstein’s townscape. For she certainly stands out when, wearing two different shoes and with her boisterous and cheerful manner, she goes about her tedious administrative errands in the old town.
Like no other Mountain Lodge/Hut, Silvia and her warm-hearted team manage to make hikers feel like royalty, whilst climbers enjoy that unrestrained feeling of ‘being at home’. After all, who wouldn’t love to be treated like royalty at the Kaiser?
Christoph nimbly skips his way up the first slab section. ‘Via Aqua’ – the name says it all. Over thousands of years, the water has eroded wonderful rock formations. In fact, the upper section of the 1,000-metre climb is one long series of water-carved grooves. But as beautifully as the water has shaped the rough holds here, it reveals its ugly side during a thunderstorm. Within a few minutes, the climbing route is transformed into a raging torrent.
„Anyone who has seen this natural spectacle once can safely give a trip to Niagara Falls a miss.“
In his climbing guide *Longlines*, Adi Stocker has compiled a list of the longest climbs in the Northern Limestone Alps. And because humans have always been hunters and gatherers, there are more and more climbers who collect longlines just as others collect Panini football stickers. This new breed of longliners is also the reason why the “Via Aqua” has now become the most sought-after route in the Kaisertal.
“The route gets an average of about 15 ascents per summer,” Silvia tells us. “However, some people underestimate the protection. Although the route is well secured with bolts for an alpine route, in places they are more than 10 metres apart.” Combined with the distance of the route, this frequently leads to mountain rescue operations.
Almost in a state of flow, Christoph dashes across the final magnificent slab sections of the 24 pitches. Meanwhile, the scorching sun is taking its toll on us. It has left our mouths and throats parched. If this story were a comic, there’d be thought bubbles above both our heads containing a flashing TAB emoji (the ‘post-climb beer’ emoji).
In the early afternoon, we arrive at the Hans-Berger-Haus, parched like two prunes. “How was it? But more importantly, what would you like to drink?” asks a cheerful Silvia. The answer is obvious. On one of the Tibetan prayer flags strung across the terrace, I read the saying:
„To create happy memories, you have to plan ahead.“
How true! Thank you to Adi Stocker and Silvia Huber in advance for your work, which, in hindsight, enriches our climbing experience so much.
This feature is taken from the climbing magazine LIMIT. In this issue, we’ve devoted ourselves entirely to alpine climbing in Tirol: across 136 pages, we showcase Tirol’s impressive vertical diversity – with fascinating stories from 15 climbing spots that offer a deep insight into the history of alpine climbing in Tirol.
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