Klettersteig Training Course, September 2022

by Kevin Crawshaw

Barbara, Ewalt and David on Franz Klettersteig
Photos by Kevin Crawshaw

Ramsau lies on a beautiful plateau below and to the south of the magnificent Dachstein massif. It is a small village with a range of good services/facilities including a wonderful indoor swimming complex. Importantly, it has very good access to the mountains and to a very wide range of Klettersteig (via ferrata) climbs.

Five of us (ranging in age from 54 to 74) gathered there on the evening of Sunday 25 September 2022 and met our mountain guide, Ewald Beikircher, who had driven up from Toblach in Südtirol a couple of days earlier to check out the options. This was a WELTbewegend course available to AAC(UK) members. We spent the first day becoming familiar with the equipment and completing four short climbs (Kali, Kala, Kalo and Heidi ranging from A/B through to C/D) on the Sattelberg which lay not far from our accommodation at the Feistererhof Biohotel.

Rain on Tuesday restricted activities to theory and bouldering at the Alpenverein facility at Gröbming. Wednesday brought good weather and a spectacular climb to Stoderzinken (2048m) on the Franz Klettersteig (mostly A/B with some C sections). This route offered a good balance between traversing and ascent as well as significant exposure. Two of the group then opted for some shorter but more challenging C/D climbs while the rest of us relaxed in the sun.

Thursday saw us at the dramatic Silberkarklamm gorge climbing the Rosina - according to the excellent English language guide booklet provided by the Schladming Tourist Bureau “Difficult via ferrata requiring a lot of stamina.”. All five of us started but two of us dropped out early. On the final day, Friday, Ewald led three of the group up the vertical and exposed Franzi in the Schladminger Tauern (C/D) while the rest of us climbed via the normal walking path. Meeting at the top we made our way to the top of Rippeteck (2126m) before descending on the gondola.

Ramsau-Dachstein is a great location for such a training course with any number of options for climbs. Early snow this year unfortunately made some of the easier ones (A/B) on the Dachstein itself unavailable but also accelerated the pace of our progress. We were very fortunate to be led by Ewald - we could not have asked for a more competent, considerate or obliging guide. He pushed each of us to achieve a level which satisfied our individual ambitions and this encouragement led the group to bond well which in turn added to our enjoyment.

I was hoping to achieve three things from doing this course: to understand the risks and how to best manage them; to get a feel for the scales (A-E) used to describe the difficulty of climbs; and to test my own level of comfort with each level. With the help of Ewald, I managed to achieve all three and found myself enjoying the feeling of confidence one gets from knowing what you’re about in exposed situations.

Thanks go to Alpenverein Britannia for the generous financial support in attending this excellent course.

Ewalt, Kevin, David and Sean on Franz Klettersteig

Raymond on Heidi Klettersteig

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