Urnerboden - Looking for Ice, Climbing Mixed

We went to Urnerboden looking for ice. There was not much of it, so we ended up doing mixed climbing instead.

Urnerboden Eisklettergarten, 1400 m / mixed sectors

WI2 to M9 across ~65 routes / single pitch / 10-50 m / limestone

Mid-December is early for Urnerboden. The falls that were there were thin, unbonded and not worth swinging into, so we moved onto the routes that work anyway — bolted mixed lines on good limestone, hooking rock with the odd smear of ice where it had formed. The area is a garden rather than a mountain: single pitches, roadside, drilled anchors, so it takes poor ice better than most places.

I don’t remember which lines we did, so no grades from me. For reference the sector holds around 65 routes, 10-50 m, between WI2 and M9, with the classics around M5-M6.

Logistics

Approach

From Urnerboden village (1383 m) through the forest to the stream, across as dry as you can manage, then a short slope to the wall — about five minutes.