sabato 17 dicembre 2016

Trummelbach IV - The connection


TRUMMELBACH IV

THE CONNECTION IS DONE  14-12-2016  !!


Holzi the organiser, Franz Baumgartner, Sven Scharer and Pascal van Duin

have done this connection section of Trummelbach between TR 3 and TR 5 "the classic".

It's not the "Las Puerta del Infierno" as our Spanish friends like to call the swiss cold technical canyons.


It's a canyon not too complicated in the conditions we found, only big problem is the risk of rock and ice falling from above, almost everywhere, but mostly under the serac of the Giesengletcher; you have above your head big and steep mountains, rock walls up to 2.400 meters high, so everything can naturally fall down thanks to the gravity force.


The canyon is deep in his best sections; it is big everywhere and the view above is always too big for small men like us; the light is little down there, even in a perfect sunshine day you feel like it's a cloudy day.


Holzi wrote that now it's one of the highest, or the highest elevation for a canyon in Europe, if you connect all the valley from TR 1 to TR 5 : 


Total Altitude difference 1855 m / distance 6.4km




On the approach we used the exit ropes of Trummelbach 3, not much snow but ice yes !

First rappel

Immediately beautiful

Very icy here, there is an icefall above so all the water coming down is freezing all around

A bit slippery


Tricky move to avoid the bath...

Partly iced and partly clean

Many good sights

And some swimmers too !

Top slot here ! 28 meters for the 2 highest drops of this section.

Exiting the first big narrow section

We reach the big snow-icefield deposit

We go under a first short section

One rappel to set

Now another 100 meters under the ice tunnel, very nice

At the exit something has collapsed

After the snowfield 

Some walking sections under huge walls of more than 2.000 meters

Slides and jumps

Drilling for the next fall, again a nice canyon

Holzi first

Sven following

Some more falls

I climbed up here to disengage a stuck rope and took pictures

Nice panorama here, we are small

We reach another section, a real beauty

Dropping in

A view from the other side of the same drop

Smiling in this nice toboggan

Lovely fall

Some short swims
The wood bridge at the end of our exploration

Arriving at the bridge, the end. Getting here from this side is a special feeling as usually we started here to enter the Trummelbach classic section that is now known as "5" of this long valley.