I had arranged to meet James for a long weekend of mountaineering in the Swiss Alps. However, when James met me at the airport yesterday, he informed me of the bad news that the weather forecast for the weekend for abysmal! Back at James' flat in Colmar that evening, the forecast was still looking bad for the Alps, but it would be dry in the Vosges on Saturday. Therefore we decided to go and climb the Spitzkoepfe ridge, an alpine rock ridge in the middle of the wooded rolling hills of the Vosges.
We left the car shortly before lunch and as we followed the path up to the start of the ridge, the clouds looked threatening. However, the climbing proved to be good and the weather gradually improved. We stopped for a late lunch part-way up the ridge on a pleasant grassy ledge. The rock seemed mainly sound, although there had clearly been some recent rockfall in places. There were trees all around the ridge, which meant for an interesting scrambling experience!
We reached the top of the ridge at around 16:30, and soon we saw the first people since we had set off that morning. We followed the path round to the summit of Le Hohneck where we enjoyed beers in the summit restaurant!
Written up in September 2010 from memories and photos
