Climbing through "the white hell" of Piz Palü (Switzerland)

Hello fellow mountaineers,

Today I am going to share the first attempt of mine to break the 4000m barrier in the Swiss Alps. We were aiming for the 4039m high Piz Bernina in the "Kanton Graubünden", Switzerland and wanted to get there via the famous Piz Palü. (There is a Film called "Die weiße Hölle am Piz Palü", translating to "The white hell of Piz Palü)
I know many people in Nepal or even South America live way higher, but as you will see, climbing 4000m+ peaks in the european alps sounds easy, but it certainly is not. (for me) (If you don't like mountain images, this post is not for you :) )

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It all started with a long drive from Upper Austria to Switzerland and a 1000m warm up hike to the 2990m high "Diavolezza Hut". At this point my headache already started to give my a really but time, but i still decided to do another warm up tour to get adjusted to height.

Piz Palü as seen from our warm a tour to Piz Torvat

Me trying to look like i was not having a bad headache

The three pillars of Piz Palü on the left and Piz Bernina on the right

Piz Palü and the famous "Bianco Grat" and the right

Piz Palü in detail

The next morning we got up at 03:00am to start our trip. Long before the sun came up, we managed to cross the field of stone-debris the glacier is pushing down into the glens and put on our climbing gear, ice axes, helmets and crampons. The landscape soon looked like out of this world and i was mesmerized immediately.

We crossed huge carvasses on our way to the ridge

The ascend was long and steep. The lack of oxygen made me breath hard and my head almost explode

Near the first summit (out of three) of Piz Palü

Me on my way up the "Himmelsleiter", translating to "stairway to heaven" of Piz Palü

It was almost surreal in it's beauty and vastness

Crossing of to the second peak of Piz Palü....

...before decending again.....

...and reaching the summit at 3995m.

Before we reache the "Marco e Rosa" Hut at 3600m we had to decend and cross the huge "Bellavista" terrace. Doing so took another five hours so, we were really exhausted and happy when we finally reached the hut.

Decending from Piz Palü

The ridge we had to climb down

Finally arriving at the hut

A had a very cold (no heating at 3600m) and short (i could not sleep, my resting pulse was way above 95 bpm) night, i surprisingly started to feel better and regained some of my strength. When i went down at 05:00am to check the weather, i saw this....

...and off were me dreams of ascending Piz Bernina

The Swiss helicopter pilots are known for their daredevil manouvers. This one seemed crazy to me. No sight, snowfall and strong winds were defied to resupply the Marco e Rosa hut.
After waiting for two hours for better weather we decided to decend via the "Spallergrat". The thing was, there still was no sight....

...as you can see....

...or not see, to be exact

So we decided to return to the hut again and waited for the sun to break through, what took her another two hous to do. So it was already around 10am when we finally were able to leave the hut for good and started our 12hour decend.

weather cleared up, at least for a while. (Me trying to not look exhausted)

The thing is, it pumped out 20-40cm of fresh snow, so we had to shape/build/find our track through the glacier ourselfes and got lost several times. The way down wasn't easy either. We had to abseil our self several times, and the climbing ground was A nice mix of fresh snow, ice, earth and stone.

Preparing to abseil

Me abseiling on a ridge

Waiting for the front guides to prepare the ropes

So around 10pm we were fianlly reaching even terrain and everyone was happy to be over the most difficult parts of today.

BUT we did not know we had to ascend another 200m to reach the hut. ARGH.....

Back at the hut after all!

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This was one of my first mountaineering expiriences and many more i want to share with you the next weeks have followed since then.
I hope you enjoyed my adventure and i was able to give you an image of the vastness and the beauty of the european alps. If you liked what you saw and want to support me, feel free to upvote and resteem this post. Thank you.

Florian