Gipfelbuch Mittler Leistchamm

As Delta said in his comment to my last visit of the Mittler Leistchamm, its peak would deserve a "Gipfelbuch". Now it has one and the Steinmannli up there is pimped up as well. Here's the story.

As so often before, I started my hike in  Arvenbüel, Arven, after getting there with the school bus (7:27 AM from Vorderdorf, it's public but not listed in the online schedule of the SBB, always runs on weekdays, but not during school holidays). A lot of humidity was in the air and everything was kind of wet and slippery…, but the sun was still shining.

I walked along the marked path towards (Hinter) Leistchamm via Röhr - Looch - First all the way to P.1911. There, instead of going all the way up to the summit of (Hinter) Leistchamm, I left the path and followed the old path (which is not maintained any more) on the eastern side of Leistchamm down towards Schafberg valley. The white/red/white markings are mostly still visible and in addition path traces are also clearly visible. The path leads you to the bottom of the Mittler Leistchamm. Alternatively one gets there by following the marked Toggenburger Höhenweg past Tritt and then walk up in the valley of Schafberg to the same point.

As one can see on this picture, the crux of getting up to the summit of Mittler Leistchamm is the 10-20m drop which spans the whole northern side of it. This drop can be conquered in many places. The easiest, according to the SAC guide - T5 according to Delta (I'd say not the easiest T5 I've seen) - is the one marked in blue on the picture. Green on the picture is the one I did during my last visit. Climbing the west ridge (yellow on the picture) was described by 3614adrian in his report, supposedly it's climbing in the second and third degree. For my visit on this day I chose the route up a mossy chute marked with red dots on the pictures. It starts east of the "SAC access" and the way there is actually quite exposed already. However, I think this is the choice of a lot of chamois and dear as well, since I saw quite a few traces.

One word of caution: The mossy chutes in combination with the not so solid rock (blue and red routes) might be slightly easier, however, under wet conditions like on this day (and there are many such days there) probably the worse choice…  Climbing where there is mostly rock and less moss, might technically be a little harder, but in my view also safer. So the bad choice I made felt more like a T6 than a T5.

For the alpine hiker there are also a few access routes from the eastern side of Leistchamm. The easiest way from east (upper T5 as well), is up a chute close to the northern side (see this picture, or, for other eastern options check out Alpin_Rise's descriptions in his report.
Update July 2010: For an overview of the different routes from east see here.

Once I was on the summit it got quite foggy and the view down to the Walensee wasn't always clear. I installed the "Gamelle mit Gipfelbuch" and pimped up the existing Steinmannli to give it an appropriate home. During this time two snow chicken (or ptarmigan) landed on the summit and nicely posed themselves for some pictures (thanks!). I also inspected the west ridge a little bit, found a geo-cache on the southern side and all kind of other interesting things…

Once I was done fiddling around, I went back down the way I came up and then walked over to Vorder Leistchamm, down to the Gocht and via west flank up to another one of my favorites in the area: Nägeliberg. The weather wasn't very inviting any more so I went down the north flank to the Toggenburger Höhenweg and from there back to Arvenbüel via Flügenspitz.


 Arvenbüel, Arven - Röhr - Looch - First - P.1911 - Schafberg - Mittler Leistchamm - Vorder Leistchamm - Gocht - Nägeliberg - P. 1969 - P. 1956 - P. 1830 - Tritt - First - Flügenspitz - Looch - Röhr -  Arvenbüel, Arven