Huge Langkofel Dolomites first ascent by Martin Feistl, Simon Gietl

With one bivouac, at the start of February Austria's Martin Feistl and Simon Gietl from the South Tyrol established Aura on the northeast face of Langkofel / Sassolungo in the Italian Dolomites. The route follows the first two pitches of the summer climb "Prinzessin im Herzen" (Fabio Bertoni, Stefan Comploi, Ivo Rabanser 1997), then continues straight up a huge ice flow for 350 metres, before veering rightwards to follow the Pichl route to the summit. The 1200m line has been called Aura and breaches difficulties up to M6 AI5. Only one peg remained insitu, at a belay on the lower part of the wall. The new line is a considerable addition to the mountain; it should be noted that for both climbers it was the first time on the summit of Saslonch. Published below is Gietl's report.

THE AURA OF LANGKOFEL by Simon Gietl
Langkogel towers over Val Gardena like a king, its imposin north face jutting majestically 1000 meters into the sky.

A very rainy autumn meant that this winter many unbelievable and fantastic ice lines came into condition in the Dolomites. At the start of December a distinctive and dominant formed below La Legrima on the northeast face of Langkofel. On the 2nd of February I set off with Martin Feistl to give it a go.

After struggling hard through deep snow to reach the start, we decided to follow a logical cracked corner  - Ivo Rabanser's summer route "Prinzessin im Herzen" - for two pitches. We then reached the start of the snow/ice line and were amazed at the excellent condition of the face. The main difficulties revolved around placing pro, or accepting the fact that there really wasn't any. The heart of the line is undoubtedly this 350 meter long ice drip!

The logical continuation of our line would be to climb to the summit following La Legrima put up by Adam Holzknecht and Hubert Morodernin 2013, but due to the dry conditions it seemed too illogical to choose this exit. This is definitely a plum objective for the future. Instead, we climbed another 4 pitches (200 m) up the north arete following the Pichl route (Eduard Pichl, Rolf Waizer, 08/21/1918) until we reached a not particularly obvious cave where we bivouacked. We managed to pitch our little tent on a snow ledge and spend a comfortable night here, well protected from the constant wind.

The next day we climbed another 15 pitches in partly stormy conditions, following the Pichl route to the 3181m summit. We always climbed with crampons and, except for a few pitches, always used our ice axes. We reached the highest point after midday and since we didn't know anything about the mountain, after a short break we immediately set off in search of the descent to Santa Cristina, from where we hitchhiked back to the Sella Pass.

Aura was a great adventure, and I would like to thank Hubert Moroder for the info he gave us about the upper section of the route. I called him from the bivy to warn that the lights were ours and to prevent any calls to mountain rescue, but he already knew everything!