Part of this year’s annibirthday (2 birthdays + wedding anniversary) fell on a beautiful, sunny Friday. Luckily, it happened to be my birthday and not the anniversary, and I managed to convince Tobias to go ski something. He had told me about this great tour from Göschenen with a 2000m descent before and it fit my wish for “something tall in Uri”.
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We knew that there would be lots of climbing — 2100m of vertical gain. We also knew that this effort most likely will not lead to powder heaven, but instead to some nondescript crusty mess.
In the end, this felt like many ski tours rolled up into one — first the spring-like approach and blistering heat, then some proper alpine-looking scrambling above 3000m followed by 1000m of very enjoyable north-facing snow, and finally the worst death crust you can think of for the last 1000m down to the valley floor.
We started like all good spring tours should start — carrying skis.
Finally up in the open looking over at Salbitschijen:
Near Salbithütte:
Looking toward the impressive walls below Dammastock
Heading toward the couloir that gives access to the Rorplatten that eventually lead to the Rorspitzli:
Climbing the little couloir:
Looking back in the direction of Andermatt:
We were trying to move reasonably quickly, but the warm weather got to us and we started slowing down… so not many photos until the summit 🙂
A couple following in our tracks seen from the summit of Rorspitzli (they were super friendly and eventually gave us a ride back down to the train station…)
The summit of Rorspitzli is a kind of unremarkable rubble pile. The scramble up and down is straightforward, but you have to be on the lookout for loose blocks… here we’re downclimbing and you can see the glacier with ski tracks below:
Ridge leading up to the summit pyramid:
Downclimbing the ridge to get to the glacier:
Finally, skiing… the snow was windpressed, recycled powder, but skied much better than expected.
Until we hit about 2000m — then the game was over and for the next 1000m of vertical we skied some pretty horrible breakable crust all the way down to the road.
Here’s Tobias demonstrating the proper technique for skiing this kind of crap:
This will be a great tour to do before work one day… 🙂
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