Mointain climbing course - Hoellental 2004
climbing expedition
participants:

I went there and have "done" half of the mointain climbing course. the second half was to come later in Polish Tatra and here you can find a short comment for those interested in Hoellental and its neighbourhood. 

The region is situated 100 km south of Vienna and is basically a mountain "nest". There are plenty of multi-rope-lenght routes, the longest that we were going to climb (but the weather was bad and we didn't) being 21 rope=lenghts (Richterweg plus Stadlgrat on Stadlwand). There are awfully many several-rope-lenght rountes of difficulties from  III-IV UIAA to VIII-IX UIAA. And of course there are base-climbs, too. 

Most of the routes we've done in the mointains (up to VI UIAA) were partially protected with bolts or at least there are loops of rope left in the rock. If there is really nothing there, then you can protect with a standard set of DMM nuts and 4 big hex-nuts.

The rock is limestone with good friction and variously carved, although there are fewer rock-holes than in Polish Jura. The weather is varying, however, it is still much better than in Polish Tatra.  So during 7-days stay we were 4 times climbing in the mountains and three times in the rock resorts, as in the mountains it rained or was going to rain. Talking about rocks, we've seen two resorts: Adlitzgräben (yellowish limestone, protected routes from IV to IX UIAA and 10 to 60 metres long) and Bad Fischau (conglomerate, also protected routes from IV to IX but rather short, up to 15 metres, still the rock itself is unbelievable - unlike anything else, very much worth seeing, especially that it lays only 50 kms south of Vienna)

For me this expedition was very successful as I climbed a variety of interesting rountes (altogether 20 with 33 rope-lenghts) including two VII- onsight and Flash :-))

There was noone to write an ordinary "chronicle" and still there was no point in doing so, as each day looked alike, so here I put only the gallery with some comments.

In Hoellental the walls are rather impressive...
... but we made it to climb!
Not only in the mountains...
...but also in the rock-resorts :)
... there was even plenty of rock-climbing! :)
Altogether it was a very fine expedition ...	... especially when we were learning that all that mountain-climbing stuff was not that complicated ;)
And then again one had to go back home :(