Dos Idiotas on the Chli Bielenhorn

A climbing day on the Chli Bielenhorn, near the Furkapass, on Dos Idiotas: a relatively recent route, around 200 metres long, opened in 2015. A beautiful line on excellent granite, but with a very definite character: sparse fixed protection, runouts, and a few places where falling is simply not a good idea.

A doubtful start

Walter had chosen the route. I had given him a few options and, after some hesitation, we had settled on this one. Walter is not exactly twenty anymore, but up to around 6b he still climbs very well. At 6:30 in the morning, though, he called me saying his back hurt and he was not sure whether it was a good idea to go. I convinced him to try anyway: the approach is less than an hour, and in the worst case we would still have had a beautiful day in the mountains.

We drove towards Hotel Tiefenbach, parked a little farther along the Furka road and started walking at about 9:30. The approach was beautiful and completely empty. Once again we had the strange impression that almost nobody goes climbing in the mountains anymore. We reached the base, found our line and looked up at this huge wall, cut by many routes, with nobody around.

The first wake-up call

At the base came the usual indecision: how many cams, do I take the blue one, the green one? In the end I took some, inevitably forgot others, and started. The first pitch immediately set the tone. The route description says that the bolts were placed more or less only to indicate the direction, and that becomes obvious very quickly.

At one point the topo suggested one line, while the bolt clearly pulled me another way. I followed the bolt. Bad idea. I ended up with roughly ten metres of runout around 6a, with the prospect of a very unpleasant fall almost back towards the base. Not exactly the gentle first pitch we had imagined. When Walter arrived at the belay, his comment was basically: yes… the protection points are rather far apart.

The 7a pitch

The second pitch is nominally the hardest. The start is already exposed: you can place something reasonably solid before the first bolt, but the bolt is still far away. Then comes the 7a move. It is not the kind of 7a I particularly understand: an almost invisible vertical seam, followed by pure smearing. I did not onsight it; I came back down, looked at it again, and eventually got through.

The traverse

From there the route gets better and better. The climbing is elegant and sustained, but it asks for commitment. Fixed protection remains very sparse, and only where cracks appear can you protect yourself properly with cams. Fortunately there are some very good cracks — just not very many of them.

Mobile protection mastery!

The traverse

One pitch deserves a special mention: a hard 6b traverse to the right. One protection point, a smearing foot, hands barely resting on a thin seam that crosses four or five metres, and then another bolt again far away. It is one of those sections where you do not really want to stop and think too much: you just keep moving right.

Once we were out of the main difficulties, Walter was fairly cooked. We both agreed, however, that the route had been excellent. I found it considerably more demanding than the grades alone suggest, mostly because of the style of protection.

A note on the bolting

This is also my only real criticism. I understand the idea of placing bolts mainly to indicate the route, but in two or three places the position of the protection creates objectively dangerous fall potential. A few additional bolts — or simply moving some of the existing ones — would not have changed the character of the route. It would still be a serious, beautiful granite climb requiring trad protection, but without a few sections where a fall could have consequences well beyond the difficulty of the move itself.

Descent and practical notes

The rappel descent works well and is straightforward. One word of caution: around pitch 5 there is a rather unstable stack of blocks where the rope can get stuck when thrown from the belay. Some of these blocks may move while freeing a jammed rope and could fall onto pitch 3 below. Ideally, the loose material should be cleared.

For the grade, I would consider a solid 6b+/6c mandatory level realistic, or at least very good familiarity with this kind of terrain. More than pure climbing grade, you need to be comfortable moving efficiently above protection and placing cams quickly when the opportunity appears.

For the rack, I would take cams from about 0.2 to #2. I did not find a #3 necessary. Doubling roughly the 0.3 to 0.75 range makes sense without carrying too much. Crack gloves can be useful on one pitch — I think around the third — where the crack climbing becomes more relevant.

Highly recommended. I would happily go back, also to try the 7b variant, which looks more physical but perhaps more straightforward to climb than the 7a sequence we did. That 7a remains, for me, a rather mysterious piece of granite. Maybe that's the meaning: Dos idiotas.

Refreshing bath on the way down.

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