Munich is an Alpine city. With the Alps close by and having the people who run the German mountain guide scheme in our faculty, I thought it was a good idea to run a course in Mountain Sports where we combine challenging life sciences topics related to mountain sports and altitude/hypoxia with practical training in mountain sports. The highlight of this course is the high altitude expedition to the Wildspitze. The students have to pre-acclimatise and train themselves based on the best available evidence and also run small experiments related to oxygen saturation, energy expenditure estimation and the P/O ratio during fat and carbohydrate combustion.
Here, we have reached Vent in the Ötztal which is the base for our expedition.
We first ascended to the Breslauer hut at 2844 m.
Lower down it is not all nature...
... but soon we left noise and valley life behind.
Our guides were Gudrun Weikert, the first German female mountain guide and Andy Weikert, a guide that runs the German mountain bike scheme together with Gudrun.
We ascended up to a small peak at 3000 m...
... before descending to the Breslauer hut for food and more or less sleep.
Here the food bit.
We had breakfast at 5 am and then ascended...
... over some snow fields where we put on crampons...
... towards the glacier ...
... and the ascent also included a via ferrata.
Here is Mika, an Erasmus student from Jyväsculä.
After that we roped up on the glacier...
... to reach the base of the last ridge...
... which we then scrambled up ...
... to reach the summit.
During the descent it became foggy...
... but after a gentle descent on the upper glacier...
... we reached sunshine and the step to the lower glacier...
... for a rest.
More glacier descent on slush...
... holes in the glacier...
... and then some ice screw and ice climbing training on the lower glacier.
Here is Julius refining his technique...
... and here is Julia.
After all that a long walk to the Vernak-hut.
The next morning the teams split. Andy led another glacier expedition and we got an introduction to rock climbing and via ferratas from Gudrun.
Here is the more exposed via ferrata section with Mika leading the charge...
... and here the whole team is on the wire...
Here, is Gudrun at the top.
Here is Mika on the descent to the Vernakhütte...
... here a photo on the long walk back to Vent...
... over a free hanging bridge...
... until we could see the village of Vent.
I was impressed with the fitness level of the students who prepared themselves well for the altitude. A great expedition and clearly an asset of studying Sport and Exercise Science at TUM.
HW
Well done students - exhibiting good technical mountain skills. Interesting to see the results of the mini experiments carried out at altitude. Roger
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