Climbing Ice Faces Near the Oberwalder hut (Grossglockner Area)

The Grossglockner region is one of the premier areas in Austria for climbing ice faces. Though climate change has significantly reduced some of the once mighty ice faces there are still enough possibilities left for ice climbing. A perfect base camp for aspiring ice face climbers is the Oberwalder hut (2973m), located in the huge bowl formed by the Pasterze glacier.

The Oberwalder hut is situated at the top of a rocky outcrop called “Grosser Burgstall” just on the edge of the firn fields of the Upper Pasterze glacier. It is accessed easily within about two hours from the parking slot near the Kaiser Franz Josefs Höhe. The nearby Pasterze glacier makes the Oberwalder hut also a perfect spot for training crevasse rescue techniques. Huge crevasses are just a short walk (5-10 minutes) away!

There are quite a couple of ice face climbing routes in the vicinity of the Oberwalder hut. Most of them are suited well for the beginners who want to have a first taste of what ice face climbing is about.

The most interesting ice face routes around the Oberwalder hut include:

When we visited this area in June, 2007 we had somewhat bad luck. It was after a really terrible winter with not much snow and quite a warm late spring. Hence, most routes were out of conditions due to lacking nightly freezing temperatures and danger of rock falls. However we enjoyed playing around in the Eiswandbichl (which is relatively safe from objective dangers like rock fall). On a second day we managed to climb the North East face of the Baerenkopf (which happened to be extremely easy and was more of a steep walk than a real ice climb).

Eiswandbichl, near Oberwalder hut (Grossglockner area)