Technical difficulty: 10/10
Fitness: 4/10
Objective danger: 9/10 (ton of exposed sections)
Landscape: 7/10
Busy: 1/10

An amazing technical ridge on the West Ridge of Guffertspitze, with a lot of technical scrambling and silent solitude

Starting point: Gasthof Waldhäusl
Ending point: Gasthof Waldhäusl
Length: 14km
Vertical: 1400m
Speed: Very technical terrain (up to III UIAA) and lot of bushwacking

Route:

We start following the trail steeply from the car heading north, following the signposted route to the summit of Guffertspitze. We climb through the forest first, with the trail getting progressively rockier and technical as we go up. After about 650 vertical meters, a small trail leads off north-west along the south face of Guffert.

The trail starts crossing through mountain pines, first on narrow but visible trail, which gets progressively more overgrown as we continue. It can take hours to go through this section. Climbing under and around the dense trees. However, the trail is relatively easy to follow through the visible marks of the trail being cut. About 80% through, there is a steep and very exposed rock field, that needs to be crossed with caution.

Once reaching the face, we descent shortly alongside it until we reach the start of the ridge. You can find the topo here for a better overview. Most of the route is relatively easy and well marked by cairns. The first harder move (II+ on the topo) is few moves on a steep block of solid rock, with big holds. Next we reach the first crux (III section). It is a short slab (maybe 3 moves), where you have to trust your feat on a narrow ledge. The next crux comes after another 100m or so. It can be tricky to find so stick to the ridge until you see a drilled belay point. There is a sport climbing variation here (up to 6-) that you can bypass to the left from the belay point. Traverse on the north side of the ridge. The crux is a ~4 meter band of rock we need to traverse. At the time of writing, there was a drilled fix point at the start of it with a short rope. Hanging on the rope made the next good foothold reachable and the section easy to do.

Continue along the north side of the ridge until climbing back to it. There is another short technical section (II+) climbing up to a large block and followed by longer section of easy walking/scrambling. Once we reach another drilled belay point, we need to get through the next crux of the route (III). It is a slab again, steeper this time, but with relatively good hand holds to make it feel more secure.

After this the ridge scrambling gets easier again and we make up some solid ground. Just before reaching the Guffert West summit (2140m), there is a short section of very narrow ridge (II-III). After that a nice final piece of ridge leads us to the west summit. From the summit, we backtrack a bit and head southwards down a hundred vertical meters or so through grassy bands until we reach one that connects all the way to the main eastern summit.

At the end of the grass band, there is the last technical crux of the route, another technical slab (II). This one is much longer than previous sections (maybe 6-8 moves) and very exposed. It can be very tricky when wet or frozen. There are fixed belay points on either side of the band, in case we need to use the rope. Once we get over this section, all that’s left is another piece of really airy scrambling on some nice rock to the Guffer East summit (2195m).

The downhill follow the hiking route from the summit. It starts of with some fixed ropes on a very polished rock. After that, we descent along amazing mountain meadows and eventually back into the low alpine pines. After about 600 vertical meters, we pass the point where we turned off on the ascent. We stick to the marked trail and backtrack our steps back to the parking lot.

Pro tip: Bring a friend for this tour. There is a ton of technical sections, where having a person watching over you is helpful. Also if not feeling confident, bring a short rope.

Photos by @the.running.nomad and @bennibru