Blog Posts in Category: Mountaineering

2023 in 100 Photos

Alastair BegleyAustria, Bavaria, Dolomites, General, Germany, Italy, Landscape, Mountaineering, Paragliding, Rock Climbing, Scrambling, Ski Touring, Skiing, Slovenia, Via Ferrata, Walking, Winter Walking Short Link

All to quickly it was once again the end of another year and time to reflect on the year. This year we really started to settle into our routine of living an hour from the Alps, with travel being much easier and having settled into Munich life, both professionally and socially. Unfortunately at the start of the year Becky had an accident and badly broke her wrist which was also misdiagnosed which delayed her recovery. This significantly impacted our year as we were unable to climb, klettersteig or ride our bikes for most of the year. The highlights of the year for me have to be Becky’s continued progression at skiing with her initial foray into ski touring, my ski mountaineering adventure on the Ruderhofspitze, my continued paragliding progression with my first flight over 100km, our wonderful holiday together to Slovenia and a beautiful walk near munich with a combination of snow&autumn colours. Winter Winter continued with lots of weekends away skiing with family, friends from the UK and friends from Munich, it seemed like we had a constant stream of visitors which as wonderful. Becky’s progression continued and she. Read the full article…

Tiroler Scharte

Alastair BegleyAustria, Ski Touring Short Link

We had two nights booked in the Jamtalhütte for some ski mountaineering and in the week running up to the trip, the weather could not make its mind up as to if the weekend would have excellent weather or awful, what was however certain was that the day we approached the hut would be spectacular. We set off from Munich via train in the morning and after a very smooth train journey, and a slightly less smooth bus journey which made me feel rather green, we arrived in Galtür in time for some bakery lunch prior to setting off for the hut. The skin up to the hut was beautiful, with snow from the village, a good track and wonderful scenery. It wasn’t long after we left Galtür that we started to feel like we were in the big mountains and fairly remote. After a 10km skin in we arrived at the hut, where I was certainly feeling the lack of exercise from the previous few months! We didn’t really have time to head out for a tour, and by this point the cloud had started to come in. We. Read the full article…

Kleiner Gamsstein

Alastair BegleyAustria, Ski Touring Short Link

With Becky’s progression with skiing I felt like it was time for her to attempt her first proper ski tour. The challenge was to find a route which felt like a proper ski tour, with a wonderful view from the top, but which actually did not have too much ascent, or more to the point, off piste descent. After looking through multiple guidebooks I eventually settled on the Kleiner Gamstein, from the Hoch Fügen car park, as it was a significant viewpoint, with an approach along a piested xc route before the final ascent. It was a lovely way up with fantastic views in great snow conditions. I had expected good views, but it is safe to say that I hadn’t expected the views from the summit to be quite as good as they were. Despite the wall to wall sunshine the summit was fairly cold, so after a few photos and forcing our lunch down quickly we set off on the descent. The descent took us quite a while, as unsurprisingly Becky found her first proper off piste descent pretty difficult. Nonetheless, we were back at the car in. Read the full article…

Veitsberg

Alastair BegleyAustria, Winter Walking Short Link

A lot had changed in the mountains since the previous weekend on Schellschlicht, as a significant amount of snow had fallen during the week. The weather forecast in the morning looked stunning, with high cloud forecast for the afternoon before more precipitation in the evening. We also needed a short day as Becky had to drive the van back to the UK the next day, so we settled on an early ascent of the Veitsberg, which had a book time of 4h15mins if the ridge on from the Veitsberg was excluded. The walk was really enjoyable from the get-go, as the autumnal colours were just stunning, and with a snow line down to only just above the car park gave us some really beautiful scenes with autumnal trees covered in plenty of snow. A rare combination thanks to a late autumn and a reasonable amount of early snowfall. Despite the snowfall we made good time, and were soon at the start of the ridge up to the summit. Here was where the day progressed from great to outstanding, as the views were just spectacular due to the clear air, green. Read the full article…