Danny Menšík, Petr Vicha awaken the White Lynx on Rysy in Slovakia’s High Tatras

Eleven years ago, Czech climbers Pavel Vrtík and Martina Kratochvílová established a new winter route on the rarely visited northeast face of Rysy, one of the major peaks in the High Tatras mountain range, located on the border between Slovakia and Poland.

The route follows a striking white rock band in the upper part of the wall, which they named Bílý Rys (translated: White Lynx). They aid-climbed the hardest pitches, and the route had been awaiting a free climb or an attempt ever since.

Last winter, on the 10th anniversary of the first ascent, Petr Vicha and I attempted the climb, but due to excessive fresh snow and rime ice, we decided to turn back.

This winter, everything came together, and we managed to free the route with some minor variations from the original line, making it more logical and better suited for free climbing. The route features a relatively long, six-hour approach, two perfect bivy spots, and plenty of adventurous, pure climbing with almost no in-situ gear. The lower part of the route has relatively poor rock, but above the first bivy, the rock quality improves significantly. The exposure on the upper pitches is extraordinary, and overall, the route is a gem.

The crux of the climb is the White Lynx, a steep, overhanging, and athletic drytooling pitch, which we graded at M9, VII- (RP). The two hardest pitches include a short section that is more suitable for climbing with bare hands rather than ice axes, and dry tooling here would be significantly more challenging. Therefore, we assigned combined grades, M7, VII- and M9, VII-. As is often the case in the Tatras in winter, it often makes no difference if the route is graded M4 or M9; the climbing is always committing, from start to finish.

by Danny Menšík