Lost on the Pilatus Nordwestpassage

While waiting for my brother Mats to finish his MountainMan half marathon, I have a couple of hours to spare on Pilatus. A great opportunity to check out an interesting route from the SAC guidebook "Alpinwandern/Gipfelziele Zentralschweiz Vierwaldstättersee". The Nordwestpassage traverses from Pilatus Kulm to the Tomlishorn on a ledge below the cliffs on the northern/Nidwalden side of the ridge, and is graded at T5- in the guide.

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The weather is far from ideal, but at least it's not raining. I fear that the path might be still wet and slippery, and I'm prepared to turn back if it gets too precarious.

From Pilatus Kulm, I go trough the gallery, up some stairs and trough the gate, taking the path down towards the Klimsenhorn. At the very first right turn, I keep straight ahead onto an unmarked but obvious path. This quickly brings me to the foot of the cliffs, and to the interesting part of the route. The path keeps traversing in spectacular fashion just below the cliffs. Often, you have a choice between two different ledges, one a couple of metres below the other. The lower ledge is usually a slightly easier, but in any case the difficulty is around T4. The route is exposed, but not nearly as badly as might appear from photos. I'm also pleasantly surprised that the route is reasonably dry and perfectly passable.

Towards what should be the end of the traverse, I hit a dead end. The ledge ends and vertical rock blocks the way. The guidebook says: "Through a final, very steep and rocky depression, there is a track, at first sight very daring, but in fact quite accessible, though very exposed. After this section, continue for about 50m, and descend on a grassy rib on the side of a scree run." This definitely does not match with my current position. The most natural way out seems to be to scramble up through a dihedral. I decide to explore this option, in the hope of stumbling upon a more obvious continuation further up. The scrambling would probably be a grade I in the dry, but with moist rock it feels more like II. Just at this point, it starts to drizzle, making my position a little precarious. At the first little plateau, I take a break, hoping for the drizzle to stop and giving myself the time to assess my options. Trying to scramble up further, will probably make my position even more precarious. Going back down seems to be the only sensible option.

Scrambling back down fortunately doesn't prove too difficult. I've had enough and just retrace my steps, following the entire ledge path back towards Pilatus Kulm.

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Where did I go wrong? I can only imagine that the guidebook's route descends away from the foot of the cliffs at some point. Certainly, where I ended up, does not match the description.

The route seems to be pretty much nonexisting on hikr.org. "Pilatus Nordwestpassage", the name used in the SAC book, doesn't give any hits. Finally, I do find a long discussion relating to this route. The discussion ends with reports by Tobi and ossi. They obviously got to exactly the same point as I did, and also decided to try to scramble up (topo). In a freaky coincidence, they also were suddenly hit by rain while scrambling up. However, they seemed to have had it even worse. They report being forced to climb further up, mastering grade III climbing in the wet before reaching the summit of the Tomlishorn. This confirms that I certainly made the right decision to abort my attempt.

The question remains: where is the continuation of the route as described in the SAC guidebook? Has anybody here done the entire route? I'd be very interested to know where I went wrong.

Update: Chrichen found the correct route.