Büelenhorn

You had to participate in the weather lottery, if you wanted to do any hiking this weekend. We gambled on the Büelenhorn and we hit the jackpot. A window of good weather allowed us to reach the summit with fabulous views. And yes, our luck turned in the end: a thunderstorm made us bail from the Stulsergrat and got us pretty wet on the descent. But by that time, we had cashed in plenty of profits already...

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A heavy rain shower has just passed and the skies are brightening up as we arrive in Stugl / Stuls (limited parking just above the turning place for the bus). We hike up to Alp da Stugl, where an only vaguely marked path climbs up towards the Büelenhorn. There terrain is not hard, but the path is rather hard to follow, even in good visibility.

After a short diversion onto the secondary peak of Bott'Ota, we rejoin the path on its crux section (T3+). The path traverses west of the Büelenhorn summit, before joining the Stulsergrat path on the Büelenhorn north-west ridge. An ice axe is strongly recommended until the snow has completely disappeared here. Also note that there are still some sizeable cornices around the Büelenhorn summit. We are the first people this summer to put our names into the log book.

The views are still amazing on the summit, but we can also see bad weather rapidly approaching from the south-west. We descend towards the Stulsergrat, but we soon start cutting some corners in order to get away from the ridge when the thunderstorm arrives. We rejoin the a marked hiking path above Curmeglia and we descend in the rain back to Stugl.