Schwarzenstein and W. Floitenspitze from Floitental/Greizer Hut

Here you can find the full route description

We start early at 5:00 a.m. from the hut and follow the signpost towards Schwarzenstein, which leads us on a well-trodden but, apart from a few cairns, unmarked path. The path ends in the rocks smoothed by the glacier and is now only detectable by route sense and a few individual cairns. We first ascend a bit further and then mostly cross the rocks on a wide band to the beginning of the glacier. The glacier is bare and the crevasses are therefore clearly visible. There are two ways over the glacier: Either relatively directly over the first large crevasse zone and up the left glacier edge. We choose the second way and first go briefly steeply over a crevassed glacier part, then cross to the right below the first large crevasse zone (caution: there are some large crevasses here too) and then go more or less directly up the glacier to the notch (keep to the western rock edge but not too close because of rockfall).

When you are almost at the saddle, as soon as the firn slope becomes flatter, cross to the rocks on the right side (west). We make a short break here and leave everything we no longer need, as on the descent you pass by here again.

Now ascend to the ridge over the rocks or the firn field and follow it quite exactly (occasionally a cairn). The climbing is not difficult and mostly grade I. Shortly before the end of the ridge, you then cross onto the glacier field and follow it along the left edge to the rocks (which we initially mistakenly thought were the summit). Then you can already see Schwarzenstein on the right side, but you still have to descend a little into a small hollow and then first over the glacier field and finally a short ridge up to the summit.

On descent, go back to the rocks before the hollow and then down the normal route towards Schwarzenstein Hut (southeast-facing rocks). Here there are distinctive trail traces and normally some people are also on the way. Now follow the trail traces until you reach a firn field again. Depending on conditions, you slide or walk this first downwards, then slightly left into a wide gully. You can now either go via the managed Schwarzenstein Hut (+100 vertical meters) or cross to it at the mountain station of the material cableway and descend north side over rocks to the Tribbach saddle (a bit further down you ascended to the ridge at Schwarzenstein).

However, we cross again to the right here and ascend over a path well marked with cairns over the ridge to the Western Floitenspitze. The climbing here is also mostly grade I up to shortly before the summit. Shortly before the summit, however, there are two tricky spots to overcome.

First, you come to a large granite monolith blocking the way. Here you have the option to climb it with difficulty about II+, crawl through a crack on the left side and then climb up inside the crack (good holds and easy to climb), or cross further to the left and ascend over the very steep firn slope (45 to 50°). Possibly best is to cross further to the northwest ridge and ascend there (but we didn’t try this).

Afterwards follows an exposed section directly on the ridge, where the difficulty is mostly the stones usually covered with snow and especially the holes in between. At the summit cross itself, there is then a short steep ascent.

The descent is by the ascent route. In our case, we go back to the Triebbach saddle, retrieve our left items from the Schwarzenstein approach, and then follow our ascent track down the glacier. Advantage if you ascended on the left side (west) going downhill: After the crossing, there is a long direct ascent line which we slide down with the ice axe in hand (caution: keep rope distance, as crevasses are possible here too). Then through the crevasses keeping right (east) and back over the glacier rocks to the Greizer Hut.

Small tip for the descent over the rocks: Do not get into trouble on the bands and descend too early but rather cross more. If you cross too far, you end up on the path from Löffler and can go over this to the hut; if you descend too early, you end up in steep rock and scree walls (very dangerous, slippery, and not protectable terrain).