Braunwald Via Ferrata (2nd Sept. 2007)

Team: Sandrine, Andy

The Braunwald VF is situated above the Braunwald village, one of those rare places without cars. The VF consists of three parts (cf Figure 1).




Figure 1: The three VF routes (blue, red, yellow)


We had to walk one hour longer than planned due to one of the lift being out of order. We then started with the blue VF up to the Leiteregg and then continued with the red route.



Are you tied in correctly?















Sandrine tackling a chimney.














Unfortunately the weather was very misty, thus the views were not that grand. The climb was however quite interesting and pretty exposed in places, but due to the fog, the real height was not quite apparent.





Towards the top of the climb of the red route.



















The routes follow essentially the ridge line which gets somewhat narrow in places.



This is awesome: Pi - nuts!
Sticker on a box containing a 'summit log book'

















The down climb was astonishingly time consuming as it lead straight down a grassy mountainside, but at least there were cables to clip in and hold onto. The rocks were slippery as in places!






The long ladder at the end of the red route.



From here it was only scree sliding and hiking some walking trails down to the gondola that took us back to Braunwald.
This VF is very well set up and the protections are in excellent condition. Only drawback is the down climb from the red route: this gets a bit tedious after a while (especially in the middle of a cloud). I reckon that if one has the time adding the yellow route would be the best option as this route ends at a tramping track, thus avoids the down climb. The route is rated between 3 and 5, the latter applying to the yellow part while the former may be true for the section along the ridge line. I'd rate the climbs on the blue and red sections with a 4.
All in all this VF can be absolutely recommended, preferably in better wx conditions.