The weather forecast for Saturday had been fairly mixed all week, but it had remained sure that there would be very strong winds. With this in mind we had elected to do an alternative variant of this route to minimise the time we spent on the ridge. However, due to me following the wrong route we ended up doing the entire ridge, which as it turned out was a fortunate mistake as there was no wind, clear air and wall to wall sunshine.
The ascent to the start of the ridge was fairly painless, and we gained a surprising amount of height fairly quickly. As we emerged from the forrest onto the ridge just below Brünstelskopf it became clear there was plenty of snow along the entire ridge and that we would need to put our crampons on.
The ridge was just spectacular, with inspiring views in every direction, clear air, lots of sun, and more importantly no wind. We must have been on the ridge for quite some time as it is a reasonable distance, but it really didn’t feel like it took very long as it was so enjoyable. We saw another team in front of us, and another team behind us, but didn’t meet anyone on the ridge which was wonderful. For the most part the snow was good, however the section up to the Großer Zunderkopf was very hard going, with deep and crusty snow.
The descent from the Vorderer Felderkopf down to the Enningalm was effortless thanks to the snow. We enjoyed second lunch at the alm before starting the long descent back down to the car.
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