Winterlücke P. 2820 west ridge

A Hikr first ascent? Not very likely. Surely many people doing the Joriseen Rundweg would have visited the summit of P. 2820, an easy 5 minute detour from the Winterlücke. The west ridge of P. 2820, however, is a bit more interesting and probably almost never visited. So let's make a Hikr report out of it anyway...

My original plans actually had nothing to do with P. 2820. The Flüela Wisshorn was my actual goal. However, in a stroke of bad luck, I seemed to have picked the only corner in all of Switzerland where a rain shower passed as early as 11am on Saturday morning. Sheltering in the abandoned army bunker just below the Winterlücke, I had to re-evaluate my plans. The rain was nothing more than a drizzle, really, but the skies towards Piz Linard still looked rather threatening. (Ivo66 also noticed that at the same time on the other side of the valley...) I didn't fancy being surprised on the Wisshorn summit by the next rain shower, making the descent hazardous. (Of course, a little later the skies were as friendly as predicted again, and you wouldn't believe that I had had to abort my ascent of the Wisshorn...) Plan B was initially to simply do the Joriseen round hike. But I was still itching for some scrambling, and during the ascent do the Winterlücke, my eye had already caught sight of the west ridge of P. 2820. This looked interesting enough to try to use it as a descent route.

The west ridge offers some rather inconsistent terrain: A bit of Blockwerk, some Schrofen, a few more solid rocks lower down... The upper part between P. 2820 and P. 2712 is rather unproblematic. Below P. 2712, the ridge is a little steeper. There also seems to be a possibility of descending south from P. 2712 to reach the marked hiking path. The difficulty of the ridge depends a lot on which line you actually pick. It's at least T4 / I, but you can make it more difficult if you want. Look at my photos for a suggested line.

It's certainly not the most beautiful ridge and not really worth a trip on its own. But maybe if you find yourself in the same situation, or if you're just looking for a less conventional route to the Winterlücke, this might be a interesting little exploration...