Lithuania: Aukštojas Hill (17/28)

We had descended Sněžka early enough to get a good chunk of the driving across Poland under our belts. This was all going well until after prolonging a toilet stop until I really did have to stop, but we managed to stop at the same time as a tour bus. The two free toilets had a queue out the door, but we had no Polish zloty so half an hour of queuing it was.

Our luck did not improve as five minutes before our intended stop for the night we witnessed a car accident. Luckily no one was hurt and we weren’t involved thanks to Olly’s quick braking, but there was a lot of waiting around for the police to turn up. We both thought hanging around would be pointless but the right thing to do, this was confirmed when the police turned to us and rolled their eyes and turned away again when we said we didn’t speak any Polish.

After a late night we got up and headed for the Lithuanian border. We stopped at a tourist information just over the border where the toilets were payable in euros. The guy from the info desk was very helpful and said he thought the van would need a vignette to drive on some roads in Lithuania. We had come to the conclusion we didn’t need one but he showed me the website and even printed out pages of vignette information for us. Even so we weren’t sure we did need one, but bought a 24hour vignette for six euros just in case.

Out first stop in Lithuania was the Trakai Island Castle, this 14th century castle held great strategic importance as it is the only island castle in Eastern Europe.

The castle was a pretty popular tourist destination but it still felt quite calm and quiet. We walked past all the advertisements for cruises where each of the captains wore fake, comical captain’s hats.

We had a walk around the castle but decided to not pay the entry fee, instead I suggested that we should get a different view of the castle from the water. Olly not wanting to crush my pedaloing dreams (or not wanting to hear me complain afterwards) gave in and we compromised by only peddling for half an hour, just enough time to circumnavigate the castle. We also had an ice cream which I thought was particularly tasty.

Our next task was to tackle Lithuania’s highest peak, Aukstojas Hill. En-route, we spotted an info board and a boulder, this turned out to be the old highest point, 500m down the road we parked up and walked over to the new highest peak. There were suspicions as far back as 1985 that the old highest peak was not the highest, however suspicion was not confirmed until a team of specialists from the institute of Geodesy at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University measured the peak using GPS technology in 2004. The old highest peak was measured at 292.7m high, however 500m away a higher point of 293.84m existed. This became Lithuania’s new highest point. The new info sign states that everything is highest on the higher hill; both the pine tree, and the oak tree, and the hazel are the highest in Lithuania and in the autumn the highest ripe nut can be found!

There is another commemorative boulder and even a viewing tower here.

With another peak ticked off we headed to Vilnius, the capital. We arrived late in the afternoon to a car park we had researched online. This was already busy with all sorts of caravans and campers. We did have to laugh at the Italian woman shouting what looked to be pretty unhelpful instructions to her husband whilst he was reversing with the windows up. 

We headed into town for the evening and ticked off the sights. The architecture is very varied from the unusual neoclassical cathedral to the gothic St Anne’s church.

We both felt a very good vibe from Vilnius, it seemed to have a young, hipster feel about it. We decided to have dinner in town and tried some local beer and the local speciality which was potato dumplings. There seemed to be a lot of fancy ice cream stalls which I was quite surprised at considering the average temperature in Vilnius for half the year is below 0.

After a little too much of a lie in we headed towards the Latvian border. We realised after setting off our ETA for crossing the border was two minutes later than when our 24hour vignette expired.

‘No problem’ said Olly we will just do the max speed possible and make up some time. As copilot I did some googling to check the speed limit, after guessing we were on a motorway rather an expressway we did a solid 130 km/h across Lithuania. This did put a dent in our miles per gallon and I was trying to calculate how much of a drop would make it cheaper to just buy another 6 euro vignette. I never did finish this calculation but we crossed the border at exactly 24 hours to the minute after we had purchased our vignette.

Czechia: Sněžka (16/28)

Crossing from Austria into Czechia we headed for Český Krumlov. A picturesque town, which had been recommended to us by some friends, as it features a castle guarded by bears living in the moat.

Leaving the car park we struggled to find the castle. It turned out it had since merged it’s buildings with the town, and our route took us through the gates and courtyards out into the main town. Before that though, we sought out the bears.

The story goes that the bears took up residence in the moat in the early 1700s, and that as those ones died off more have been gifted or donated from aristocrats. However, the present day bears didn’t look particularly happy pacing around their concrete moat enclosure. I’d imagine modern day zoos would have better living conditions for a sleuth of 4 bears.

As we strolled round we were trying to decide what we should do next — should we carry on driving through Czechia or spend the evening here. With much back and forth we eventually settled on staying the evening and found ourselves a nice spot by the river for some local cuisine and beer.

The next day we drove through the rain, arriving at Prachov Rocks in the early afternoon. It’s a large collection of sandstone pinnacles (geologically similar to Meteora).

The Climbing Club Prachov was formed in 1907, with claims on the first recorded climbs in the area. It’s quite an unusual climbing destination, as to prevent damage to the soft sandstone rock metal protection is prohibited. Instead climbers use knots tied into rope to jam into cracks to protect their ascent. Both the rain and the lack of familiarity with this style of protection prevented us from having a go, but I’d be keen to attempt it in the future.

The following day was our hike up Sněžka, the highest peak in Czechia. We started early as we also wanted to get a head start on driving through Poland to Lithuania later in the day. It also attracts a lot of visitors (7,000 per day according to one website we read), and later we saw that one-way footpaths had been implemented to ease the crowding. So by starting early we also managed to avoid the masses.

We made our way up the wooded valley — along a well made path — before climbing steeply up to the saddle along which runs the Czech-Polish border.

At the top, we poked our heads into the small church which had been built on top; now nestled in between a number of other restaurants and souvenir shops.

After admiring the large cloud inversion on the horizon for a second or two, we had our summit photo taken, and caught the cable car down — continuing our practice of hiking up and catching the cable car down when available.

Sojourning in Switzerland

Half-way up Zugspitze Olly decided that we should make the detour to Switzerland that we had been discussing.  It happened that two sets of our friends were on holiday there and it wouldn’t be hugely out of the way for us to make a detour to visit them. Once we were off the cable car the next conundrum was whether to purchase a Swiss vignette or not. These are quite expensive (approx 30 euro) as they last a calendar year. After much discussion we payed for both an Austrian and Swiss vignette (which was going to massively decrease our driving time) and set off west.

We split the journey by staying a night at a motorway services. We hadn’t done this before but had read good reviews about free hot showers and modern toilets. The facilities exceeded our expectations, there was free drinking water and hot showers with inbuilt hair dryers and the craziest modern toilets I have seen outside of Japan.

The toilet seat folded down to prevent people from peeing on it and the soap and water are over the toilet bowl. It even flushes itself when you open the door!

We had just settled in for the evening when we started to hear loud banging noises. I began to wonder if we were parked next to a military firing range. On closer inspection it was fireworks. It turns out that it was Swiss national day, which apparently is quite a big thing.

In the morning after our free hot showers we headed in the direction of Gstaad to meet up with Tom and Grace. They were staying here in between some guided mountaineering days in the Swiss alps. 

We had a catch up over a picnic, neither Olly or I had thought to check the exchange rate and therefore we accidentally spent £9.40 on 8 slices of ham. Oops, we had forgotten how expensive Switzerland is. In the afternoon we went for a walk around Lauenensee. It rained a little but we managed to get back to the car before the biggest downpour.

Tom and Grace had had a booking.com issue and although their hotel was meant to had a communal kitchen when they checked in they found it didn’t. Instead, we cooked the ingredients in the van at our campsite and made some via ferrata plans over some beers.

Both Grace and I were a little concerned over how hard the via ferrata was going to be, especially after my last grade D Austrian via ferrata experience. However with Olly planning to pack a rope in case it was as bad as the last one we headed off to Leysin in the morning.

We got the cable car up the mountain and had a short walk in to the Tour d'Aï. Even coming up in the cable car the via ferrata route looked impressive but also imposing. We decided to have some lunch before starting and we managed to slot ourselves perfectly in between two groups such that we didn’t catch up with the people in front and those behind us didn’t catch us up. It’s always so much more pleasant climbing like this.

The route was very vertical, even slightly overhanging in places and very exposed. Although unlike the other grade D via ferrata there were many well placed stemples. This made it much more fun as I didn’t feel like I was going to die. I would highly recommend this route if you are in the area.

At the top we had an awesome view of Lake Geneva and could watch some paragliders flying past. The walk off the top back to the cable car was also pleasant with an extra bonus section of via ferrata. 

Back in the valley we had an explore around Leysin and an ice-cream. Tom and Grace went to check into their hotel whilst we went to check out a potential parking spot for the night. We found a car park with some easy climbing routes, some picnic tables and a good view over the valley.

That evening we went out for burgers, most of the restaurants seemed to be closed as if the town was on a summer holiday. This seemed odd as there were quite a few tourists around in the daytime. Again we were shocked by the cost of food in Switzerland, £22 each for a burger and chips! After dinner Tom and Grace came back to the van for a few drinks and we formulated a climbing plan for the following day.

Tom had located a crag in the guide book about half an hours drive out of Leysin. This turned out to be incredibly narrow and at some points we thought we might be driving down a bike track. This crag was great as it had 50+ routes of climbing grade 3-6. All short single pitch, and the even better despite the rock being limestone and the grades being easy the rock wasn’t horrendously polished.

We tackled a few routes which were quite different to everything I have climbed before, there were lots of small channels which often required having both hands and both feet in line. After some lunch in the sitting in the sunshine in pleasant surrounding with good company we headed back to the cars and said our goodbyes.

Tom and Grace are off to spend a week climbing Swiss 4000m peaks which sounds amazing.

We headed towards Grindelwald where we were going to meet up with Adam, Cat and baby Eddie. That evening we had some drinks (thanks to Adam and Cat for supplying Italian alcohol), admired their new van — which is now baby safe — and discussed both of our recent van adventures. They had just driven up from Rome. The great thing about van life is you can have such flexible plans, the downside is the logistics of organising to meet up with anyone when everyone has such flexible plans. Adam and I have been monitoring each other’s location on Google Maps for a few weeks to work out if or when our paths might cross.

Eddie has grown a lot since we last met him at the UBSS annual dinner when he was four days old. He is now approximately one third of my body length tall despite being only 5 months.

After a reasonably late night for us and quite a few drinks we returned to our van next door. We had rough plans of a walk from the car park up the canyon and then to traverse around the base of the mountains following the Eiger trail. 

In the car park there was a sign saying the Grindelwald glacier used to extend as far as the car park but has hugely receded in the last 50 years. It also described how ice from the glacier used to be harvested and a one meter cube size block was sent to the Mayor of Berlin for advertising purposes in 1977.

We headed up a steep path in the woods for a couple of hours. We passed the Coca-Cola shelter which unfortunately did not sell Coca Cola but was set up as a free shelter with BBQ facilities, a supply of wood and even a sharp axe for chopping up logs. We saw a couple of these shelters around Switzerland and I think its a really great community facility.

Eventually we emerged out of the woods but not before Cat had shown off her foraging skills finding heaps of wild strawberries, raspberries and bilberries.

We were now on the Eiger trail and could see the top of the peak was enshrouded in cloud. The North Face of the Eiger is steeped in mountaineering history. The most famous story is that of the tragedy of the 1936 expedition to climb the north face. The whole four person team were killed whilst trying to back off their climbing attempt, with Toni Kurz hanging from a rope perishing only feet away from the rescue team. This earned the North face the name “Mordwand” or death wall. The north face has claimed the lives of a further 60 climbers since it was finally summited in 1938.

Not wanting to get too close to the actual mountain we continued along the trail to the Berghaus Alpiglen hut where we stopped for a beer. Here we sat and admired the views and were reminded of the dangers of the mountain when we witnessed a big rock fall on the upper slopes. 

I was pretty excited as the hut sold a kids ice cream which was served in a plastic snail. I think the waitress thought this was ordered for Eddie but lucky for me he hasn’t developed a taste for ice cream yet. Suitably refreshed we decided to save some money and walk back to the vans rather than ride the cog train. Again we avoided the rain and had a pleasant walk back down to the valley. In the evening we went our for more burgers which weren’t as extortionately expensive as the last ones then retired to Cat and Adams van for more drinks. They have a great set up for socialising with the front passenger seats swivelling and enough room to put up a table.

In the morning we said our goodbyes and headed back east to climb some more peaks.

Germany: Zugspitze (15/28)

After Großglockner we’d planned for a bit of a rest day, so we headed to the local outdoor swimming pool. It wasn’t an especially sunny day and by lunchtime it had started to rain. We started planning what to do next, and how to tackle Germany’s highest peak — Zugspitze. We also had vague plans to meet some friends in Switzerland, and the forecast suggested tomorrow would be the best weather for the next few days. So we decided to drive for Zugspitze, and attempt it the next day.

We chose a via ferrata route starting from the Austrian side, but first we had to drive through a section of Germany. As we drove through Garmisch-Partenkirchen the traffic was stopped by police as a procession dressed in traditional lederhosen & dirndls marched past accompanied by a marching band.

The next day we set off early, and arrived at the cable car station before it’d opened. We walked steeply up the side of a ski slope, and then onto a path which zigzag-ed up a steep scree slope.

The whole route was pretty steep; gaining 1800m in a relatively short 12km. The later section was via ferrata which we almost had to ourselves.

Gaining the saddle, we had a short section of summit ridge — still protected by steel cable — to reach the summit platform.

Here the two cable cars (one from the German side and one from the Austrian side) terminated. We also met the hoards of tourists. Stepping onto the platform was quite a shock; there were so many people. 

We struggled to find the true highest point, eventually we found the spire marking the top, but we also found the queue! We ended up queuing for around 45 minutes; waiting our turn to cross the 20m section of via ferrata to the top.

With that accomplished we beat a hasty retreat. We caught the cable car down, and with some now firm plans to meet some friends we headed to Switzerland.

Austria: Großglockner (14/28)

We’ve actually been in and out of Austria and Slovenia a number of times over the last few weeks. However, we left Slovenia for the last time and crossed the mountains into Austria, after a few hours drive found a nice lake, parked up and settled in for the evening. 

We had a few sundowners and another GB camper turned up. These guys are spending six months travelling around Europe in their VW Transporter. It turns out we are basically doing opposite routes so we swapped recommendations and advice for our upcoming countries. We had a little van envy as they had a pop top, an insect net — which covered their side door — and some USB powered fans, which we really could have done with that night.

We wanted to have a couple of rest days, after completing four peaks in the previous week, and before attempting our highest peak to date in Austria. So we did what seems to be a traditional Austrian summer holiday activity and headed to a Lido at Worthersee. But after our beach day was shortened by a thunderstorm we headed in the direction of the mountains.

We found a spot which happened to be near some sort of woodland story trail. After a pleasant cool night’s sleep we were rudely awakened by a hornet flying in through the window, luckily Olly kept calm, and caught it in a mug. Now fully awake we went for an explore in the woods. Conveniently amongst the odd wooden carvings and the mini water wheels there was a compositing toilet, winner!

The weather was looking a little unsettled for the following few days and we had read that Großglockner is very popular so its best to avoid climbing over the weekend. To kill time we headed for Falkertsee which is a small lake in the Biosparenpark Nockberge. Near the lake are a couple of via ferratta routes. We decided to try and squeeze in one before the forecast afternoon thunderstorms. We opted for the harder grade D route which turns out is the hardest via ferrata I have ever done. I have always thought I would be OK with via ferrata as one can hand over hand climb the cable in a worst case scenario. It turns out this route was the worst case scenario, there were very limited holds for hands or feet so we had to haul ourselves up the mostly vertical sometimes over-hanging cable for 200+ vertical meters.

They say you should do something everyday that scares you and I think this covers me for at least a week. Olly was very patient waiting for me to work up the courage to continue with each section and to rest my arms every 10 meters.

After we escaped this horrendous pull-up torture we walked up to the summit of Falkert, ate our lunch, and walked back through the valley. I had another fright when I narrowly missed treading on a snake which was crossing the path.

The following day we started our Großglockner preparations which included scouring the area for an outdoor gear shop which sold ice-screws. Eventually, three shops and an hour drive later we found some and bought the last two in the shop. We then headed for a camping stop near to Großglockner. It had been pouring down with rain all day but luckily our spot had a small shelter in the forest with a large table which we could use for gear sorting and packing.

Also included in our preparations was a YouTube refresher of how to wear mountaineering rope coils and Olly teaching me the basics of crevasse rescue. This would be the most technical climb we have done this trip and possibly ever without a guide.

The following morning after waiting for the rain to stop we headed up the Großglockner normal route. The route starts simply enough with a slog up a gravel path to the Studl Hutte at 2802m (this is where most people meet their guide). Though it had stopped raining the visibility was still pretty poor. This actually worked to our advantage in multiple ways, firstly we couldn’t see how imposing the glacier walk was and secondly it was much cooler walking in overcast conditions.

We roped up for the glacier following the well worn tracks in the snow, we had a quick stop off to practice placing our new shiny ice screws before continuing the exhausting snow plod. Finally we reached the cliff which had some sections of via ferratta. 

These weren’t too technical, but were steep. We are still getting used to being roped together and I think this can be an argument generator. Eventually after a gruelling 1525m of ascent we reached the Erzurum Johann Hutte at 3454m which is the highest mountain hut in Austria.

We chilled out for a few hours before a three course dinner and an early bed-time. Breakfast started at 05:30am so most people were in bed by 9pm. Annoyingly not everyone shared this idea as someone insisted on turning on the light and talking loudly at 10pm. The same person turned the light on at 5am so Olly missed his 15 minute lie-in.

Breakfast was a little sparse, but quick and we were out the door before 06:00. It was actually better to be behind the guided groups as they are always very fast. We headed up another two snow slopes which were definitely steeper and more imposing than the glacier crossing. Next we reached a rock wall with some via ferrata cable. This was actually quite tricky and because you are stepping from ice to rock you have to climb the first section whilst still wearing crampons.

Here our major rope faff began, it was very tricky to work out how much rope to have out and how far to climb between belay points. The guides all short rope their clients (have a short amount of rope and lead them like a pet) which definitely reduces the faff, but this doesn’t really work for our abilities.

Eventually we made it onto the main ridge which is impressive in terms of its exposure and views. We now had the hang of how much rope we wanted out but the next challenge was contending with groups coming back along the ridge and guides pushing their clients past us. Along the ridge are a series of metal poles fixed into the rock which everyone uses as simple belay points. This makes passing people particularly awkward as you keep having to untangle your ropes from the other groups using the same pole.

After a series of scrambles and untangles we made it to the summit at 3798m. The views were amazing and well worth the effort to get there. We then repeated the same faff to get back along the ridge and down to the top hut. There was now a clear view of the whole the glacier, after a few snacks we headed back down the via ferrata, across the glacier and back to the Studl Hutte.

The plan was to stay a night here to break the decent but we both decided we would rather walk another 2.5 hours downhill and get a good nights sleep in our van. We opted for lunch at the hut, but bamboozled by the German menus and having been up since 5am we ended up with some rather expensive but very tasty pasta.

With some rain clouds approaching we made our way down the final section of path, and were lucky enough to see a whole heard of chamois with huge horns as well as a marmot.

We made it back before the rain and had a very sound nights sleep. This was definitely the most challenging peak we have done, partly due to the grade II climbing on the ridge and the winter skills required for glacier crossing and walking up steep ice slopes, but mainly due to having to deal with a lot of other people. Quoting Olly “This was probably the most stressful day of my life”. Which is because he felt responsible for my safety. Personally I was less stressed than on the awful via ferrata earlier in the week.

The next day we headed to Germany & Switzerland (details in future blog posts), but a week or so later we were back in Austria on our way to Czechia. We made a stop off near Innsbruck for the Klettersteig Stuibenfall on recommendation from our friends Cat and Adam. This is a via ferrata route which runs up the side of the largest waterfall in Tyrol. This is a easy-moderate via ferrata but includes fun things like a wire bridge across the top of the waterfall. After arriving at the top of the waterfall you return to the bottom by a series of metal staircases which must have been a feat on engineering to install.

Our final adventure in Austria was to visit Schwartzmooskogel Eishohle, an ice cave on the Loser plateau. This area has been explored by the Cambridge University Caving Club for over 40 years. We have never attended this expedition but many of our caving friends have. With our access arranged with CUCC we headed up to the plateau with a GPS point of the cave and a set of instructions to locate it. 

However fate was kind to us, the German caving expedition which normally runs alongside the Cambridge one were camped out in the car park and a group of cavers were planning to explore a cave very close to the one we intended to visit. They very kindly showed us the way. I had forgotten how tiring it is to walk along limestone pavement. There are many clints and grykes (fissures and ridges) that one has to hop over. The German cavers had been crossing this area for days and so I had trouble keeping up. The route was pretty tricky, butwe definitely saved many difficult hours of wandering around trying to find the cave by following them.

This cave is different to most we explore as it is an “ice cave”. The name translates as ‘snow volcano’. Once we climbed down the snow slope in the entrance we entered a huge chamber which had an ice covered floor. At one edge was an enormous snow slope leading to another entrance which must have been 30 meters high. This is where the cave gets its name as this snow mountain looks very much the same shape as a volcano.

The cave has a series of ice formations which change shape every year, partially melting in the summer and reforming over winter. Some of these were 10 meters high and we spent some time wandering around the huge chamber having a look around and attempting to take some photos.

This is the first time we have used flash guns and we are pretty happy with the results. After a couple of hours we returned to the surface to have some lunch and find our way back to the car park. That evening we enjoyed a beer and a chat with the German caving group before we headed to Czechia the next morning.