Working Saturday mornings shouldn’t prevent a weekend adventure. Setting off from Ströden Parking at about 14h30 on 15th October, we made our way off the beaten track to a collection of three small lakes in a glacial cirque. We rushed to find a suitable spot to bivouac before the last of the light disappeared. We ate dinner to the sound of, nothing. It was lovely. Around 6am we woke to a beautiful sunrise over the Lasörling Gruppe and, still in sleeping bags, enjoyed watching the orange and pink hues dance around on the clouds.
Surrounded by four 3000ers, I had to satisfy my summit-bagging needs. I left Caroline at Hohe Grubenscharte and squirmed along the sugar-snow covered North ridge of Ogasilspitze (3032m). The ridge was an enjoyable grade I/II scramble, made that bit more exciting with old snow that was on occasion much deeper than anticipated. Having taken a bit longer than the 45 minutes I told Caroline, I quickly changed my sopping wet socks, rang what water I could out of my boots, waved them around for a 10 minute air dry, before we made our way to join onto the Alpenkönig trail. This is a remote, high level traverse connecting Clarahütte and Essener Rostocker Hütte.
Crossing over Hockkarscharte, we were awarded with fantastic views of the glaciated Venediger mountains to the North and views straight down the Virgental to the East, with Grossglockner peeping out on the skyline a few valleys over. The initially rotten-snow covered path descended steeply into the Maurertal and we were both thankful that the snowline had retreated to above the steepest most technical section of the descent.
Due to the ever steepening slopes down to the Maurerbach below, there is unfortunately no shortcut to the trail that takes you back out to the parking. Instead, you have to climb up the valley in the complete opposite direction, along to Essener Rostocker Hütte, before making a U-turn and descend back down to Ströden. This would have been made mentally easier had the hut been open for strudel and coffee, alas it was October and the valley was already in the shade of Hochkarkopf – the mountain we had just descended. We stopped regardless for some wafery Loacker sugar goodness, to give us that push for the 1.5 hour descent back to the car in twilight.
Mountain Movement 