Climbing Grossglockner 3,798 m - A Tribute to Jindra and Ondra

As a tribute to two friends who died in June while climbing Grossglockner, we decided to carry their symbolic flag up there and climb to the summit in their name..

Jindra Koreš and Ondra Forst died on 16.6.2012 after an unlucky fall at the very end of the Stüdlgrat route, about 20m below the summit of Grossglockner.

After a summer spent on theoretical and practical preparation, we set out to bring a memorial for Jindra and Ondra to the site of the accident, together with a group of 25 of their friends and family members. Afterwards, the three of us (me, Honza Bartoš and Patrik Malina) wanted to try to climb to the summit in their name.

We left Prague by car at five in the morning and arrived at the meeting point (the parking lot below Grossglockner) shortly after noon. More carloads kept arriving until there were an impressive 25 of us. Setting up the memorial in a beautiful spot beneath a rock face with a view of the summit of Grossglockner took the whole day, but the result was worth it.

Unlike the boys, we had extreme luck with the weather, so the sun shone on us all day long and we could set off on the climb from 1800m to 2800m even at a pretty late 17:30. We reached the Stüdlhütte hut at about half past seven, early enough to be blown away by the opulent dinner we hadn't expected at a hut with LAGER-style sleeping.

Sleeping in a room with ten other climbers and a lack of oxygen felt a bit like an oxygen tent. In the evening we went to bed at 2800m, but by morning the oxygen level was more like 4000m, because the rest had been breathed out. Everyone set off for the summit between five and six, while we treated ourselves to a leisurely breakfast and left at about half past eight.

We took two ropes, harnesses, prusiks, carabiners, crampons and ice axes and went off to train. Since Patrik was the only one with enough previous experience, we took Sunday as a training day and until late afternoon we practised first crossing the glacier field and then belaying for a safe progress along the Stüdlgrat ridge. We got as far as just below the Frühstücksplatz checkpoint.

The most interesting incident of the day was a guy who ran past us like a chamois in short shorts (we nicknamed him \"Undies Guy\") with a small backpack. Before we had climbed three rope lengths, he literally ran to the summit and back, completely unroped. We only fully appreciated his performance the next day, when we struggled through the hardest sections below the summit, roped up to the teeth, where you're afraid of a \"brown alert\" even when you're secured with a proper rope.

The conclusion of the training day was that we probably have what it takes, but we'll have to speed up significantly. That's why for Monday we chose the method of moving together with running belays instead of belaying from stances and taking in. Since the sun was blazing brutally all day, I got a decent sunstroke and went to bed well before nine.

In the morning I shook off my fears that the sunstroke might keep me from doing the climb and this time we set off at six. The climb up the lump above the hut and the glacier crossing took us 1:20 this time. Starting up the Stüdlgrat ridge, we didn't let ourselves be swayed by parties overtaking us unroped and stuck to the motto safety first. We reached the Frühstücksplatz checkpoint in 3:15, which was totally fine given all the delays with the crowds of people.

Frühstücksplatz is at an altitude of 3550m, so \"only\" about 250 vertical metres below the summit, but the hardest part was still ahead of us. Generally the route isn't that hard, maximum difficulty 4-, it's well protected and, unlike with the boys, this time there was practically no snow. But climbing 4- at Gutovka is one thing, and it's something else when the ridge is only about half a metre wide with a 300m drop on the left and a 450m drop on the right. Luckily none of us suffers from vertigo and we protected everything really meticulously, so we didn't take a single step without being clipped to a solid point.

We reached the summit shortly before noon, when the weather had got slightly worse, but you could still see. It's clear that the boys up there arranged the weather tailor-made for us, because as the Austrian who owns the land down at the parking lot (where the memorial is) said, he'd never seen weather like that here before.

The descent over Kleinglockner was a lot harder than we expected, plus it started snowing a little on us. The transition from the rock onto the glacier looked really dangerous, so unlike everyone else we rappelled down it. It was definitely the safest and fastest way to go.

We walked across the glacier in a light mist to the Johann Hütte hut. I wasn't feeling great at all, but one goulash soup, a Radler and two pills of \"Pink Happiness\" did me good. In the hut we waited out a hailstorm, which dumped several centimetres of grainy snow on our descent route. Luckily the whole descent down to the glacier is protected with steel cables, so the worst that could happen was a scraped knee.

Down below, the entry onto the glacier started with a proper crevasse whose bottom you couldn't see (see the photos). We went over the theory of glacier belaying and crevasse rescue technique again, and set off, crampons on our feet and ice axes at the ready. Everything went without incident, after all dozens of people had passed through here in the last few days. After several sunny days the glacier melts like crazy, so besides crevasses we were also jumping over several streams.

We got to the hut before eight as usual and enjoyed an opulent dinner and a few Radlers.
In the morning all that was left was the descent to the car and 650km home by car. We were all relieved that it turned out well and the mission was accomplished. Thanks, boys, for that experience.