Clariden one day trip from Klausenpaß

I wanted to go for a tour last weekend with SP member Sebastian Hamm, but since he will marry Katrin this weekend he couldn’t manage it, because of too much organisation left.

SP member Schmid_th also asked Sebastian under the week before, so Sebastian gave him the advice to call me.

After sorting out the weather report it was pretty clear, that the western Alps were a better idea than the eastern Alps. We also didn’t want to drive to far and Saturday’s proposal for weather was rather unstable with great weather forecasted on Sunday.

The plan was driving in Saturday evening, sleeping in or in front of the car and climbing up to Clariden in a one day tour from Klausenpaß on Sunday, returning to Stuttgart the same day.

The drive only took us something more than 3 hours, which was pretty fast. When we arrived at Klausenpaß we found a small chapel with a roof in front to be the best place to sleep. After an hour in our sleeping bags it started to rain and the wind was blowing the wetness under that chapel’s roof, so we moved into my car.

Next morning we started in clouds, but rising up we soon came out of the clouds and could see today’s goal for the first time.
The ascent from Klausenpaß goes over meadows first and reaches a rocky ridge soon. The ridge leads to the beginning of the glacier, called “Iswändli” at the connecting passage. At the beginning of the glacier we met a group that was on the decent and started from Planura hut that day.

The glacier was still in good conditions and it is likewise to go in big circle to the right after climbing the ice-wall (Iswändli) to avoid some crevasses. Reaching the glacier plateau nice views over the huge basin of “Hüfifirn” and to the mighty summit of the Tödi open up.
An icy ridge leads to a bad in shape and loose rock ridge that goes up to the fore summit.


From there a short decent leads to another snow-ice ridge, that connects the main summit. The final passage goes up the rocky east-ridge to the main summit that is secured by a lot of metal and some chains at the exposed passages.


Arriving at the summit I was alone, followed by Thomas shortly after.The sea of clouds had been getting drowned by the sun during our ascent, so here and there a deep view into the valleys was possible.



The weather was clearing up, so there was no need to hurry. Passing down the "Iswändli" could be done without problems.

We took our time on the way down and enjoyed the deep views into the now visible valleys of Urnerboden and Schächental.

In the lower passages we enjoyed beautiful alpine flowers and green gras.

Back at the car we decided to stop by during our drive home at Vierwaldstätter See (in my opinion the most beautiful lake in the Alps). It was too hot in the valleys already. After driving only 30 minutes we jumped into the cold water (16 degrees Celsius). It took some time to get in, but felt refreshing once we made it.

Images

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