Hard New Ice Climging Routes and Scary Soloing in Austria

On January 7th the Austrians Albert Leichtfried and Benedikt Purner completed the first ascent of Centercourt WI7+, 300m. This route is located in the Eisarena in Gasteinertal, Austria. It took Leichtfried one and a half hours to climb the crux pitch of Centercourt, placing a single bolt on the lead that still did not make him feel that this pitch was safe. The line is now probably one of the hardest ice fall routes in Europe. Leichtfried and Purner are both Austrian Alpine Guides and are building up quiet a resume of hard new routes in their home country. Before Christmas they climbed a 1000m long route that weighed in at WI6/M7 that they named Moonwalk.

Continuing the hard Austrian ice ticks this month was Rudolf Hauser. Just to the side of Centercourt is a 270m long WI6 called Supervisor. This route was first climbed nearly twenty years ago by Joseph Steinbacher and Hans Zlobl and it took them eight hours. In January this year Rudolf Hauser free soloed the route in one hour and forty minutes.

For more info: see here
For more pics: go this place

source: climbmagazine.com

Pictures Ice Climbing World Cup Saas Fee - Finals Men

Being in the vicinity of Saas Fee during the World Cup Ice Climbing I took the opportunity to shoot some pictures of the world class competition ice climbers. Our 'basecamp' in Grachen turned out to be a perfect hot spot for ice climbing activities ourself. Just below Saas Fee a small but fine gorge is situated and filled with high quality waterfall ice in the grades of III and IV. Tim and I scaled two of them and later on another near Saas Balen.

Below some pics of the (for me) two leading men, Markus Bendler from Austria and Park Hee Yong, delivering some spectacular ice climbing acrobatics in the (world?) famous parking lot of Saas Fee. Pictures of our own ice climbing adventures will follow later.