unclimbed peaks in Europe

by **kamil** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:00 am

Eric, I 'read' it there and kinda translated it for myself, it would be nice to have a live word from our Spanish friends :lol:

I guess 'unscalable' should be replaced by 'unscaled', but thats only google translation, I know...

by **visentin** » Thu Nov 05, 2009 3:22 pm

arntfla wrote:Hi Eric. I have discussed this with Petter Bjørstad.
I assume you're asking if there are any *known* peaks that have still not been climbed. The answer is probably a firm NO.
There may of course be tops that no one has been to, one desolated mountain islands up in the north, but there is just no way of knowing. You can of course post a question on fjellforum.net - Norway's main forum for mountains. If you need help in this, let me know.
I assume the same thing is true for Sweden - which has much less mountains than Norway. For the wildest peaks, it's actually difficult to find a route that has NOT been climbed.
"Scandes" - he he, haven't heard that term before

by **kabernicola** » Sun Nov 08, 2009 9:27 pm

There are a bunch of unclimbed needles in Sierra de Gredos, Spain. In fact we have climbed some of them the last years. We knew they were virgin becouse was no possible to get down there but rapelling and there wasn´t any fixed gear on the top. They are not secondary summits or rocky monolits, they are real summits, needles with 250m rocky faces that have remain virgin till the XXI century due to its remoteness and to the fact of being far from the most frecuented trails and climbing spots...nowadays climbers are not too willing to walk 4 hours to climb not very clean walls...
Some needles are unclimbed yet in these mountains in the granitic heart of spain, we have been exploring the south side of Gredos for the last 15 years finding amazing new spots to be developed in the future.
This picture shows the last unclimbed needle we climbed last summer, Aguja Tino N, named after a famous spanish climber.

by **visentin** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:24 am

kabernicola wrote:This picture shows the last unclimbed needle we climbed last summer, Aguja Tino N, named after a famous spanish climber.

That's a good finding ! I believe places like that have the biggest chances to match what Kamil is talking about.

by **kamil** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 1:56 pm

Kabernicola, thanks for the info, my best congrats on your climbs in Sierra de Gredos and good luck for further climbing! That's the real exploring spirit

Eric, cheers for the Norwegian info.

by **kabernicola** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:14 pm

you are welcome kamil...I will post these needles in SP when my duties let me some free time...nice thread by the way!!

by **RicardoEchanove1** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 5:34 pm

Sorry if I say silly things, my english isnt very good :lol:

I think that in Spain in ranges like Picos de Europa or Gredos are still monolites or risques unclimbeed.
For example in the south face of Gredos there are very much risques, some of them probably unclimbed, and in Picos de Europa some no-importants and not high risques are very probable to be unclimed

by **visentin** » Sat Nov 14, 2009 8:58 pm

Chewbacca wrote:No-one in Norway uses the term Scandes/Skanderna or whatever. Even the keenest mountaineers will probably not have even heared it. It's apparently mainly used by Swedes.

That's the search made by Lolli (swede, you're right), see the Scandes page comments.
Isn't it one little example of the swedish/norwegian antagonisms ?

by **kamil** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 11:31 am

Chewbacca and Ricardo, thanks for dropping by. So you're more or less confirming what we know. Is the Spanish 'risco' something like 'peak' or 'tower'?

The mountains in Scandinavia in my language are called simply Gory Skandynawskie, which means... guess... The Scandinavian Mountains :lol:

I found that probably the 'last first ascent' in the Tatras took place in 1952 when Tadeusz Orlowski and Wawrzyniec Zulawski climbed Ladova Straznica (Slovak)/Kapalkowa Straznica (Polish), a little needle in the Slovak part of the range. Maybe there are some small protrusions without winter ascents yet, just because no one could be bothered to drag their arses up there in winter

by **visentin** » Sun Nov 15, 2009 7:52 pm

kamil wrote:Chewbacca and Ricardo, thanks for dropping by. So you're more or less confirming what we know. Is the Spanish 'risco' something like 'peak' or 'tower'?

The mountains in Scandinavia in my language are called simply Gory Skandynawskie, which means... guess... The Scandinavian Mountains

I found that probably the 'last first ascent' in the Tatras took place in 1952 when Tadeusz Orlowski and Wawrzyniec Zulawski climbed Ladova Straznica (Slovak)/Kapalkowa Straznica (Polish), a little needle in the Slovak part of the range. Maybe there are some small protrusions without winter ascents yet, just because no one could be bothered to drag their arses up there in winter

The few french people who know what these mountains are, when they know a bit of geography, call them the "Alpes Scandinaves" (same in english with alps). But I must say I prefer Scandes as it is shorter and more original, we have enough alps apart from the original ones ! (the Dinaric ones, the Transylvanian ones, etc).
As for the question of knowing which pinnacles are still unclimbed, sure there are, and the smallest we count them, the more they are ! And we get back to the eternal question: "from when a mountain starts to be a mountain ?"

(primary factor, distance from nearest, overlooking height, etc..)
So in my opinion searching where are the unclimbed mountains is not the real question. It is : "which biggest mountains remain unclimbed"...

by **kamil** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:48 pm

Aren't you tempted to climb it?

visentin wrote:So in my opinion searching where are the unclimbed mountains is not the real question. It is : "which biggest mountains remain unclimbed"...

If we aren't counting Caucasus, I might know a few possible answers

by **kamil** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:05 pm

Never say never, I must pop in someday and drag you up there. Remember I almost did last summer... some peaks are still waiting

by **kamil** » Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:46 pm

I had a flag both times in 2008 too, just in case :lol:

Only now we were in a team of 2 climbers and well prepared... although it was much harder than we thought.
The year before - the 1st time I didn't even start climbing and the 2nd time I only climbed half a pitch with self-belaying.

by **kamil** » Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:18 pm

I asked Alex, the Russian SP-er, and he says that in most of Caucasus "it wouldn't be easy to find anything worthy because everything resembling mountain top was climbed many times already", only "unclimbed objects can be found somewhere in Chechenya"... Alex is an expert of Caucasus and knows his stuff. So probably highest unclimbed peaks of Europe are in Chechnya. Besides that... Albania is my guess.

by **kamil** » Sat Jun 05, 2010 6:18 pm

kamil wrote:I found that probably the 'last first ascent' in the Tatras took place in 1952 when Tadeusz Orlowski and Wawrzyniec Zulawski climbed Ladova Straznica (Slovak)/Kapalkowa Straznica (Polish), a little needle in the Slovak part of the range.

I found an update to this. Janusz Kurczab with 3 friends (all Polish) climbed Vysna Mlynarova Kopa/Wyznia Mlynarzowa Kopa in the Slovak Tatras for the first time in 1970. Source: the latest issue of Polish climbing mag Gory (May 2010).

unclimbed peaks in Europe

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