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Hansjörg Auer discovers direct finish to Goldrausch

Austrian climber Hansjörg Auer has added a direct finish to Goldrausch, Roßkopf, Rofangebirge, Austria

Planetmountain

August 2012

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Hansjörg Auer adding the direct finish to Goldrausch, Roßkopf, Rofangebirge, Austria.

Goldrausch - gold rush - is the name of a legendary climb up the North Face of the Roßkopf in Austria's Rofan mountain chain. First ascended by Darshano Rieser together with Hannes Eder in September 1982 and completed a year later by Rieser and W. Müller, the route presents a technical VIII-/A0 crux above an 8m run-out which rendered the route a true psychological alpine testpiece, one of the hardest of its genre in the Alps. So much so that it's only known repeat, by the Austrians Günther Gapp and Raimund Moser, was carried out 21 years after the first ascent. At mid-height the route breaks off right along a 35m A0 traverse to gain somewhat easier ground and the challenge, taken up by Auer the other day, was to forge its direct finish...

GOLDRAUSCH DIRECT by Hansjörg Auer

Last week I established a direct finish to the route "Goldrausch", located on the circa 360m high Roßkopf North Face in the Rofangebirge in Tirol's Northern Limestone Alps range. Rofan offers amazing sportclimbs on the Klobenjoch and if you go to the other side, behind the ridge, you come across some extremely demanding alpine routes. Years ago this was the playground for legendary climbers like Hermann Buhl, Darshano Rieser and Heinz Mariacher... No need to add more!

It was Darshano Rieser who established the first part of "Goldrausch" in 1982. He managed to climb some blank slabs half-way up and stopped temporarily at the big ramp in the middle of the wall. A year later he returned to make an aid traverse to the right to finish his project up to the top. At 8-/A0 it's still one of the boldest lines of the early 80's, with only one repeat in 2004.

The direct finish was an obvious thing to do. Together with Elias Holzknecht and some other friends we made our way to Rofan last Wednesday. The plan was just to have a look to see whether it would be possible to climb some new pitches directly up from the ledge, and when I arrived at the 35m aid traverse I decided to immediately give it a go.

The wall above looked hard and steep with nearly no obvious places for protection. I had four pitons, one bird-beak, a hammer and some cams. I don't know why, but mentally I felt really strong; I took some risks and at times was at my very limit. A little beak and a piton driven in half-way was the only thing I could find to make a belay and I began to think that I'd reached a dead end. But somehow I continued to find some new features which gave me hope and built up my self confidence. A few hours later we topped out, happy we'd been given the chance to add another nice chapter to the history of "Goldrausch". The difficulty is maybe around UIAA 8+/9-.

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