Ice climbing in Maltatal

Oliver Gobin / 19. Januar 2015 / Kommentare deaktiviert / Mountaineering

In the first week of 2015 I went to the Maltatal in Austria with Yu and one of his climbing friends Xia. Luckily in the last two weeks before the new year temperatures were cold enough in order to form some ice falls in the region. In most of the years the avalanche danger is quite high in this region and you need to carefully select the ice falls in order to be safe. This year, however, there was barely any snow and avalanches were not an issue at all.

We were able to climb two long waterfalls: the Strannerbach and the central (the second) Maralmfall. One day we only did some climbing near the tunnel at Maralm since the temperature was extremely high (up to 15 °C) and all the ice falls were basically collapsing.

Strannerbach

Strannerbach in summary:
Location	Maltatal, near the bridge at the Malta-Hochalmstraße
Date of the climb	January 02, 2015
Character	multi pitch ice fall
Popularity	high
Difficulty	overall: WI 2 up to 3 (2 pitches), a total of more than 10 pitches, 550 m length with walking in between
Height gain	about 300 m height gain
Descend	you need to abseil the complete ice fall (takes a lot of time)
Conditions	good very soft ice, no snow at all, probably less ice than usually
Protection	abseil points at trees and on rock are present, a few slings for abalakovs are necessary
Material	2x 60m half/twin rope, ice screws, slings
Remarks	Due to the length of the climb, this ice fall should not be underestimated. In order to be fast, most of the pitches can be free soloed.

central Maralmfall

second (central) Maralmfall in summary:
Location	Maltatal, after the tunnel at the end of the Malta-Hochalmstraße
Date of the climb	January 04, 2015
Character	multi pitch ice fall
Popularity	high
Difficulty	overall: WI 3 up to 4+, 4-5 pitches, 225 m length
Height gain	about 200 m height gain
Descend	you need to abseil the complete ice fall
Conditions	average (early season) ice, a lot of snow, less ice than normal and harder than normal (up to WI IV+)
Protection	abseil points on trees are present, a few slings for abalakovs are necessary
Material	2x 60m half/twin rope, ice screws, slings
Remarks	suboptimal conditions