A jumble of thoughts rush through my mind as I cling to an overhanging piece of limestone, high on the side of Harauer Spitze in the Chiemgaur Alpen in Austria, my feet dangling above a sheer drop of several hundred metres. The most coherent one is: “So…this is the buzz that real rock climbers experience.”
I take another glance down at the mountain refuge where I got kitted up for this adventure less than an hour ago, to find the large alpine hut now looks about the size of a matchbox. It seems incredible that we’ve managed to put so much vertical distance between us and the starting point of the via ferrata route we’re climbing in such a small amount of time.
