Piz Prosonch – a brittle, lonely and beautiful peak near Bergün

Anna, Stani, Zina and I met at the train station  Bergün/Bravuogn. We haven’t seen each other for over 8 months by now! Since Anna and Stani wanted to explore the region of Bergün a little more, I suggested a tour to Piz Prosonch. According to the SAC guide the ascent from P. 2161 via W and SWW ridge is an L and judging from the map it should be possible for all of us.

We first walked along the marked route to Latsch. A shortcut which I suggested turned out to be a “dead-end” in the neighborhood backyards, so after that we did strictly follow the path).  From Latsch we then continued along the marked path towards Fuorcla digl Ducan. From Bergün up to P. 2039 it is all on a gravel road (T1).

At P. 2039 the gravel road turns into a hiking path (T2). A little further up, we then followed the path towards Fuorcla digl Ducan (and not Cuolm da Latsch). At P. 2161 we left the marked path and followed path traces to P. 2191 and stood below the (not very distinct) west ridge. Anna and Stani had doubts that we would make it up here, because it looked pretty steep and wild. We started to scramble anyway and more or less followed the yellow/red game protection border markings.

The rock here is very unpleasant – it’s very brittle and there is a lot of loose material lying around. Every grip needs to be carefully checked and even then you’re not really sure whether it will hold or not. We soon realized that it was very important to stay as close together as possible so we wouldn’t endanger each other by falling rocks. However, Zina didn’t always believe in this strategy and sometimes sent rocks into our direction or had to jump out of the way from our falling rocks…

The climbing itself is not too difficult, sometimes a little exposed but not much more than the first climbing degree. The actual crux is the last stretch before getting to the grass slope at an altitude of approximately 2350 m. It is very steep with a lot of rubble and nothing trustworthy to hold onto. We “worked” on this part for quite a while, but finally conquered it. After this point it is gets easier and also less steep over grass and rubble slopes towards and only shortly before the summit one needs to do a little bit of climbing again.

On the summit with the big “Steinmannli” and “Gipfelbuch” we then took our well deserved lunch break. According to the Gipfelbuch this peak is hardly ever visited, there were only a few entries per year and mostly done by locals. Except for one entry by a mountain guide everything was written in Rhaeto-Romanic.

After our break we then went down almost the same way we came up, the crux we did a little different more on the left side (as seen from above). We were very careful and took our time and everything went well. Back down at P. 2191 we then celebrated with a bottle of wine and some Vodka. We didn’t really want to leave, but at some point we had to catch our trains back home. In fact for Anna, Stani and Zina it was already too late, they only had a train/bus to Scuol-Tarasp at this time and therefore had to walk from Scuol to Ramosch.


 Bergün/Bravuogn – Latsch – P. 2039 – P.2161 – P. 2191 - Piz Prosonch – P. 2191 –   P. 2161 – P. 2039 – Latsch -  Bergün/Bravuogn