Alpine Ascent to Johannisberg (3453m)

In July I joined a guided alpine tour to ascend Johannisberg. The peak is located next to Großglockner, the highest mountain in Austria. It's a rather easy hike relative to the height but you still need full glacier equipment. The tour was split into two days with the first just to reach a mountain hut, where we stayed the night, and the second with the ascent and full descent.

_{The peak of Johannisberg the day before the ascent}

As so often, I couldn't leave my camera behind even though the weight of the glacier equipment was already quite substantial. And as so often, I don't regret it because there was a beautiful sunset in the evening we stayed at the hut, and the scenery was amazing.

While the weather was pretty bad on the first day (except for sunset luckily), a blue sky waited for us in the morning of the second day.

The default route up Johannisberg is up and down its Eastern side (left the picture above) but our guide decided that we'd go up the Western flank and descend on the Eastern side. Turns out this was the much more difficult route because the Western side consists of an exposed ridge with pretty loose rocks. I couldn't take many pictures during the ascent but here's one where you can see the route a litte bit:

It was the most difficult alpine endeavour I did so far in the end and I was happy with how it went because I felt pretty confident most of the time. And the views were not so bad up there either.