Dear all:
Today, I made a long-standing plan/dream a reality and did the popular “Rotwand Reib’n” Skitour an hour south of Munich as a 3-summit SOTA expedition.
I left the Taubensteinbahn parking lot at 9:15 a.m. and returned at around 18:00 (local time). Details of the route can be found here: https://www.davplus.de/uploads/images/qEDuovmf7Iy4sT6i1YIxjw/rotwandreibn.pdf
The full version of the tour includes three 8-pointer summits, also eligible for winter bonus:
Rotwand - DL/MF-058
Auerspitze - DL/MF-056
Hochmiesing - DL/MF-057
Thanks to many supportive chasers, I managed to activate all three summits.
Special highlights for me were contacts with Mariusz/SP9AMH (2 QSOs) and with George/N1GB, which was my first SOTA DX success.
As antenna, I used the proven 3-band EFHW with traps designed by Heinz/HB9BCB, attached to a 6m carbon-fiber mast.
As rig, I took my two MTR-based GoBoxes (GoBox and TinySOTA, see other threads for details). I took both because the TinySOTA is a new design and I did not want to take the risk to be dependent on a single rig.
There is little snow in the lower parts of the route, you have to walk for the first 30 minutes.
The snow on the rest of the route is very hard (snow crust), which makes avalanches a lesser issue at the moment, but you must really walk carefully. I used ski crampons (“Harscheisen”) for most of the steeper parts.
I did this as a solo tour but must admit that even with experience, this was on the edge of the reasonable level of risks - I only met two people the entire day briefly and was otherwise in solitude; which is nice, but risky in the mountains as we all know.
Also, the tour is pretty long (I guess 1600 m in height difference and 14 km in length or so); don’t be fooled by people who give very short times for the total of the trip; they often skip the actual summits and only touch the saddles, which is of course a no-brainer for SOTA. I only spent ca. 30 - 50 minutes on each summit, and still only made it home in the darkness with a strong headlight. Total trip time was ca. 9 hours.
The summit of Rotwand it pure ice right now and very slippery. I did not dare to take the skis and ski-crampons off.
A big thanks to all chasers, and my sincere apologies that I could not work all of them and had to QRT quickly!
On DL/MF-058 (Rotwand), it was very cold, and on DL/MF-057 (Hochmiesing), it was already getting dark and I still had 2 hours of skiing and orientation ahead of me.
I will attach a few pictures to the next post.
73 de Martin, DK3IT
