CHILDHOOD DREAMS COME TO LIFE

Bill said “Let’s either climb the line ahead of us or the canyon over there on the right side”. He had just led us through a narrow forest covered by loads of fresh snow on a ski tour around the bottom of the Serles, our hometowns mountain, on a Tuesday afternoon during our holidays. My brother Bill and I always wanted to open our own route here, because this was probably the first mountain we set foot on as children. And so here we were, searching for access to the mountain during this ski tour to finally complete a dream that had been pulling on us.

“It will take us 20 minutes to the first line, or 15 minutes to the canyon - What do you think?” He asks staring at me with love-struck eyes full of excitement waiting for my decision. “Let’s climb the canyon,” I said, “the first line looks scary, there is a lot of rock fall; I don’t want to climb there. Let’s approach the canyon.”

As we tied in we were laughing because the waterfall we saw from a lower point seemed much higher than we had expected. But Bill took off on lead gleaming with excitement as he moved up the ice gaining a snowfield where he eventually ran out of rope. The weather was windy and cold. We could not hear each other. Then suddenly, half of the rope came crashing back down the ice flow. My heart was pounding as I instinctively ran back from the wall, pulling in as much slack as I could; bracing to catch a big fall. But nothing happened. Then with a huge sigh of relief I faintly heard the ping of a hammer driving pitons into rock and the call of my brother “Belay Simon”.

Bill found some rocks to build a belay on a lower point at the snowfield. - time for me to follow. I climbed the waterfall and lead through the snowfield until I reached the next barrier standing between us and the rest of the mountain. A giant 12 meter steep wall covered by a thin sheen of ice and snow.

The leering thin, delicate moves were not exactly what we expectied during these conditions but it didn’t stop us from trying either. One move after the other, I started climbing slowly through the middle of the wall. Placing my tools safely on edges above my head and bringing my feet up. At a certain point, I had to back-battle – with the next move I had passed a point of no return, and I did not have enough equipment to protect the rest of the wall. I down climbed slowly. After more attempts and some strenuous shoptalk about possible alternatives, we decided to rappel down to our skies and call it a day.

With only two pitons left, we were convinced to open our wallets to buy more material to protect the wall properly on our next attempt and complete this dream line. We bought literally everything we could find, as we had almost no idea what we would need. The shop owner rolled his eyes as we placed all the pitons, hooks, and grappling hooks on his small desk. He couldn’t find a final price, as there were no labels on the products. He came back to cash desk after a short attempt to sum it up at the equipment shelf and termed a straight number. “That’s 100€”. We were giggling, “That’s fair enough”. We paid and left the shop with a smile on our faces. Even though we were certain we paid too much for the equipment.

We were back at the second step and fully motivated to find a way through the wall later that day. This time we tried to overcome the wall by looping around it. The idea turned out to be even more complicated. Even though we are practiced in climbing couloirs on crumbly, loose rock from our freeriding adventures this route was becoming another challenge and we were learning our intended loop was not the answer we needed. The weather changed rapidly during our last attempts, forcing us to risk being benighted in our own backyard or retreat to our skis and safety; we chose the later. Now our plan stands to return when the conditions allow us to climb the canyon system to the summit of the Serles in one clean push .