The Fine Line Between Hiking and Free Soloing

Sometimes there's a fine line between hiking and free solo climbing. In this episode we're exploring that line on a mountain called the Sonnespitzer in Austria. Although Austria is known for its steep and difficult hikes the route that we chose is really a mountaineering route and normally I'd like to climb a peak like this with at least a helmet and ideally a harness and a short rope but as we're on a multi-day hiking trip we didn't bring any of that equipment. I've been scrambling on peaks like this since I was really young and I dedicate a lot of time to training and practicing and staying fit. My friend Karim is the same but he's fairly new to scrambling and climbing and this is probably way outside of his comfort zone but I know him and his ability well and I'm confident in his mental and physical ability. We both decided he could do it. This is what happened. Two and a half hours you reckon? Yeah, we can do two and a half hours, minutes to get to the scree slope. Karim's back down there doing a little business which is very unfortunate for him. That happens. It's already looking pretty good. The scree slope is not too loose. It's actually quite nice for a change. This is the climbing section where you regret bringing poles. Well we're expecting kind of like grade three scrambling and it's definitely delivering. Actually a mountaineering route is chain belays on the way down and strictly speaking probably should have a helmet on but it is awesome conditions, very good trail, a little bit of loose rock but it's not too bad and we can pretty clearly see where we're going so happy hiking slash mountaineering. Sure-footedness required. He's getting a seat. Solid trail running. Perfect conditions. Pretty good quality rock. It's probably on the edge of what is okay to do. Let's keep going. Karim's coming up. What I am kind of hoping is the last section of climbing. Like that was probably eight to eleven pitches of grade three, four rock climbing which is fine. It's probably a little more than I expected. What are the lady in there? So we talked to, we got the beat up beforehand, we talked to the person in the hut. What did she say? That's Austria for you I guess. Yeah just a little bit of climbing. Definitely not 12 pitches. All right I think we're on the kind of summit massive. Should be pretty pretty from here. Well you know maybe not. Maybe a little bit more climbing. Okay very happy there's no wind. I'm very happy there's no one here. Okay yeah that looks pretty crazy man. Some steep ----. I love Austria. See I nearly made a dumb mistake and kept climbing up the couloir. Okay well we think we're at the summit. This is certainly the highest point. That's a big can. But the cross which is always the definitive mark of summits in Europe seems to be over there. Across this extremely sketchy exposed cliff. We're going to call this the summit I think. I mean it certainly is the summit. Do you want to go and have a look at it? No. Yeah I wouldn't blame you. Let's go, let's look at it at least. I'll go and suss it out and let you know what it's like. Sounds good. Yeah yeah. You're gonna come up this way? Yeah we got the summit to ourselves. Trail running. Super basic trail running. First summit in Austria. Did it. Well we did half of it. This is the thing you do something kind of sketchy like this and then you don't kind of really get to enjoy the summit because you like have that nagging feeling that you gotta go down. But the good thing is there's no one else up here so we won't have people like letting rocks loose onto us as we're descending. And weather's still good so I think we won't die. That is my prediction. Ready to get going? Yeah. Alright time to descend. How are you feeling about the descent? I'll go first and I'll tell you when to put your feet. If you kick a rock down I'll abort it. Alright let's do it. No I will avoid it. Be positive. Alright let's do it. You good? Let's do some sketchy ----. You guys see the path here? Just cutting a little bit around the mountain there. A lot of this is quite exposed but also like very relaxing at the same time partly because of the nice weather. It's just a lot of long committing climbing sections that a lot of people might kind of lose their head on. Just passed another guy who didn't have a helmet so that makes me feel not so bad about not having a helmet. Alright down we go. I did a little traverse across to your right there. Nice. Good movements man. Nice and smooth. I'll probably face in down climb this bit. Karim just dropped my phone as he was filming and nearly ended up at the bottom of the mountain. Nearly fucked up the whole video. Cheers. Pretty sick. Nice. Alright down the trail. It was a death wish. That thing is a death wish. Swim for hectic man. Well done. He was climbing man. He was like yeah I definitely needed a helmet. Drank coffee and ate cake at Reddaboo. Sometimes that's a smart decision. Straight to the lake. That little side quest up the Sonnisfjordur there was really nice. I think that's what I've really kind of missed from through hiking. Just being a little bit more spontaneous and just seeing a mountain and just thinking okay that looks like a good route let's go up there. That's what I really enjoyed about this trip in particular. Not having to chase miles so much and just take the opportunities when they pop up to do fun routes and challenge myself a little bit. As far as the safety kind of issues are concerned about doing a mountaineering route with no helmet no rope or any gear whatsoever. I mean everything's relative right so I wouldn't necessarily recommend that you do what I do. I would definitely always have a helmet and go with someone experienced if you're not if you're not too sure about the route. That route today it was basically my perfect style of climbing. Going fast and light and sharing it with a friend. I mean Karim had never done anything like that before so that was super cool for for us to share that experience together and for me to get to kind of push him outside of his comfort zone a little bit. I've done a lot of hiking with this guy I know kind of how his mindset works in terms of difficult things and stressful situations so I was fairly sure he could handle it and he did great like he absolutely killed it. So that was a beautiful day. Thanks for following along in this little section of the vlog. If you want to keep following along to the next episode I'll leave it right here. Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the summit.