welcome to another edition of the course “English language for novices” (like me) 
In this edition I’ll try to illustrate the saying “to be stuck between a rock and a hard place”. In German language the same meaning is expressed by “die Wahl haben zwischen Pest und Cholera”, i.e. the choice between pestilence and cholera. Don’t be scared, I’ll definitely not talk about such kind of ugly diseases 
Before I forget it, first of all Brian @G8ADD is to blame for the existence of this activation report, because his comment in another thread inspired me to take a day off the job and waste my time at such a awful day with hiking in the mountains:
Brian, I hope you accept all the guilt 
The first destination of todays tour was the soon to be deleted SOTA reference OE/TI-425, the summit called “Scharfreiter”, with a height of 2100m ASL, located on the border between Tyrolia and Bavaria.
After abt. 800 height meters elevation gain I passed the “Tölzer Hütte”, a nice and frequently visited hut that offers refreshment during the summer month but is closed during the winter.
After passing the hut there remained still about 300 height meters until reaching the summit.
As you can see winter also arrived here in the Alps:
Knowing this summit, I was also aware that the challenges to ascend this mountain significantly change between summer time, when it is a frequently visited summit, and winter time, when almost nobody is ascending this summit, at least from this side.
Near half of the route between the hut and the summit a lot of “Steinmanndl”, i.e. small cairns, could be found:
Some of these small piles of stones were quite strikingly designed:
After this intermediate little enjoyment the real life began 
:
Without snow, e.g. during summer, the normal path up to the summit completely avoids the ridge shown in the photo above. Unfortunately lots of snow covered this easy way up and additionally the snow was hard frozen and therefore was prone and slippery.
Here you see the gully, where the summer route leads up to the summit, photographed from the top, now filled with frozen snow:
Since abandoning the SOTA activation was out of question you can simple realize that I had the choice between pestilence and cholera
And in his case, at least in my humble opinion, the English saying “choice between a rock and a hard place” hits the nail on the head, because now I had to decide to either scramble up the rocky ridge or to risk slipping down the gully on the hard frozen snow 
In the end I decided to take the rock, or better to say the rocky ridge, and finally was welcomed with bright sunshine at the top of the mountain 
After enjoying the brilliant view to the surrounding mountains…
the SOTA activation of OE/TI-425 on the 30m and 20m band in CW and SSB brought 40 contacts into my log, including 2 summit to summits with Switzerland and Greece.
Nearby the Scharfreiter is also the soon to be deleted summit OE/TI-645 “Delpsjoch” located.
Because it was still not to late for another SOTA activation, I decided to hike up the summit Delpsjoch. This time on a pathless but nevertheless far easier route.
During my ascend I could watch a pride of chamois that also enjoyed the sunshine and the mild temperatures:
Soon I arrived on this lower summit …
nevertheless exhibiting great views to the Scharfreiter…
and other mountains:
During my SOTA activation of this reference OE/TI-645 I could log more than 30 contacts including a summit to summit with another OE/TI reference and also 3 contacts from Canada and North America
During the descent from this second summit I stumbled across this nice flower, a Carline thistle (Carlina Acaulis) …
that reminds me of the nice activation report of Ignacio, @EA2BD,
This flower is also called “Jägerbrot”, i.e. chasers bread, because it can be eaten. Since I’m no chaser, just an activator, and because this flower is protected by law on nature conservation, of course I did not rip out this beautiful flower.
During my descent I had a last view to the Delpsjoch, before I reached, late in the afternoon, the car park.
Once again many thanks to all chasers for calling me.
Special thanks to chasers that spotted me on SOTAwatch and to the two chasers, Bill and Manuel, who informed the other activators that a S2S from my side is desired and therefore helped me in establishing the summit-to-summit contacts.
And of course thanks to Brian for inspiring me to not spend this day in the dull office.
73 Stephan, DM1LE
