Free Mathis Route Wednesday, 26 Jul 06 @ 05:21 pm

While drinking a cold beer Koni, Alex, Flo and I are sitting on the Grüscher Alp. Full of cares we are looking at our fingertips. They are resembling a baby butt, but prepared with a sandgrinder before.
It was a perfect climbing day in Rätikon. But it was really rough on the skin of our fingers. Flo and I had contact with the rough surface of an old project to the left of the famous “Silbergeier”. More than 10 years ago it has been bolted from Rochus Mathis and his brother and got known in the guide books as “Mathis-Route”. But it has never seen a redpoint ascent so far.
Climbing in Rätikon is teaching you a lot about how to move on rock. Although Salzburg has some very technical climbing areas, movements felt pretty awkward at the beginning. Rätikon is generally known for long runouts, which has been proven again in this route. Even if you’re not necessarily facing death, you have to think creatively to check out the moves to avoid doing spectacular whippers. Especially if you don´t want to stress the belayer’s nerves too much in catching those whippers right at the ancor points. But usually once the movements are checked out, it´s changing. You don´t have to crimp the sharp edges that hard any more, movements are getting more fluent and you accept not having a bolt right at your belly any more. A special goody is waiting at the last pitch. A 2 meter overhang with incredible good holds. But mother nature turned them all in the wrong direction, just to make sure that it won’t easier than 8a+.
The real key to success in this case was called “Antihydral”. A tricky skin crème Flo brought into our little climbing community. I remember very well some situations, when I was asking in a pharmacy for any stuff to make my hard skin on the fingertips growing faster. Everyone was laughing and told me they can offer a lot of products to reduce hard skin, but they had never been asked for anything producing hard skin. This magic Antihydral doesn´t produce skin, but at least it avoids the nasty sweat.
After climbing the long and hard route “Akkazia”, Koni´s skin was looking way worse than my skin, but with a nice dinner and some bottles of wine it turned out quite easy to convince him to join me in my project the next day.
Still having pain with the sharp rock he did an excellent job showing me how climbers from the “Vorarlberger Ländle” are doing on technical rock.
With a great flow I was able to realize the first redpoint ascent of “Antihydral”.
Grading: 7c, 8b, 7b+, 7c, 7b, 8a+.

archiv:

Weltcup Finale in Hemsedal/Norwegen (Tuesday, 07 Mar 06 @ 07:48 pm)

Senda Real (Friday, 31 Mar 06 @ 07:33 pm)

The Indian Creek (Wednesday, 31 May 06 @ 02:28 pm)

Petzl Rock trip in Millau 06 (Monday, 03 Jul 06 @ 03:38 pm)

A Long Way to a Short Cut (text: Flo Scheimpflug) (Sunday, 12 Nov 06 @ 07:57 pm)

Law and Order M13, Diebsoefen Oesterreich (Monday, 18 Dec 06 @ 10:35 am)

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