Eiger double debut for Barbara Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher

Barbara Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher have celebrated their Eiger debut with a double whammy of two important routes in just two days: Deep Blue Sea and Magic Mushroom. Larcher and Zangerl traveled to the Ogre for the first time a few days ago and, taking advantage of sufficiently stable weather, immediately set about climbing these two alpine undertakings.

Deep Blue Sea was established in August 2000 and 2001 by Bernd Rathmayr and Reto Ruhstaller with difficulties up to 7b+ and in 2008 the 250m route was famously climbed in freebase style - without a rope but with a small parachute - by Dean Potter. Zangerl and Larcher obviously repeated the climb with a rope, swinging leads and climbing everything onsight.

As to Magic Mushroom, this shouldn’t be confused with the El Capitan namesake, repeated by the duo at the end of 2017. The 600m line up the righthand side of the north face of the Eiger was first ascended in 2007 by Christoph Hainz and Roger Schaeli and freed two years later by Stephan Siegrist, Thomas Theurillat and Ralph Weber with difficulties up to 7c+. The day after climbing Deep Blue Sea, Zangerl and Larcher swung leads and both made a single-day free ascent of Magic Mushroom, requiring a couple of attempts to free the hardest three pitches.

Yesterday evening the two returned to the base of the mountain, destination unknown for their third Eiger escapade.

Links: FB Jacopo Larcher, jacopo-larcher.com, FB Barbara Zangerl, barbara-zangerl.at, La Sportiva, The North Face

On our second day on the Eiger we decided to climb "Magic Mushroom" (yes, we like to repeat routes with this name ). The weather was still too unstable for spending more days on the wall, so we opted for a one-day route. We started early to climb this 20+ pitches beautiful route, which ends exactly on the famous base jumpers exit (the mushroom ); we were happy to stand on the top before the storm arrived and after having both free climbed it. Big up to @rogerschaeli and @christoph_hainz for putting up this really nice steep alpine sport climb on perfect rock: everybody should go and give it a try And now, how will day 3 looks like? Any suggestions? • @thenorthface @blackdiamond @lasportivagram @frictionlabs @vertical.life.climbing

A post shared by Jacopo Larcher (@jacopolarcher) on Aug 9, 2018 at 12:42am PDT