Mixed Climbing in Switzerland

Laélian Schaeffert & Jon Murua
Leysin Contournable, Tour d'Aï West Face
TD+ M6+

Winter ascend of this delicate and sustained mixed climbing route on solid limestone of the Swiss pre-alps, Vaud.

Transcript:

Today, we are going to visit a local mountain, the Tour d'aï.
It's only 2000 metres high, but it offers some fun mixte climbing routes in a solid limestone and frozen turf.

It's a good place to train before engaging in more alpine routes as it's very well bolted and the access is straight forward by the ski slopes.

There is a new topo coming up describing the routes in the area. There are multi pitch routes on the North Face and the West Face and a dry tooling crag on the East face called le Mayen or Leysin. So I suggest you wait until the topo gets published.

We were surprised with plenty of snow on the approach which got us pretty warmed up before starting the climb.

The route was covered on snow so we had to clean it to find the holds.
This is rather tiring, but it's part of the game in winter climbing.

There are 4 pitches, out of which 3 are pretty sustained.

The holds are good, specially the frozen turf which gives a fantastic feeling of security.
It's delicate climbing, quite steep, but it doesn't get overhanging.
The difficulty is mainly due to the small holds which require good technical skills.

We got to the top smoothly, but wanting more.

We'll be back!

Have fun and stay safe!


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