Tough job mountain cleaner

It gets dicey with earth wasps

Matthias Ramsauer and Philip Lindenthaler (from left) doing their extraordinary work(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

Salzburg's mountain cleaners showed "Krone" their dangerous work on the 50-meter wall at Neutor. These men not only have to be free from giddiness, they also need good nerves.

The harnesses are fastened and the ropes are attached. And off they go down the 50-meter drop into the rock. Philip Lindenthaler and Matthias Ramsauer "clean" the striking wall to the side of the outer new gate. The hard work of the twelve Salzburg mountain cleaners prevents loose chunks of rock from falling onto the people below.

The Mönchsberg is peppered with loose stones. The increasing downpours wash even more stones out of the "pile of gravel". That's what Ramsauer calls the mountain, into whose rocky slope he strikes with his pointed hammer. "Building site", Lindenthaler calls over. The "Krone" editor, who was allowed on the "tour", hands him his colleague's hammer. "Hias, that one sounds hollow. It has to go," decides Lindenthaler as he taps the stone with two hammers.

The rope holders respond to the radio calls from "Jager" and "Hauser". According to legend, this was the name given to the first mountain cleaners in 1669, and they still call each other this today(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

On the next tour, the two have to split the one-metre chunk into pieces and drop it into the depths. The men keep a close eye on where they are climbing in the vertical wall. "Once I stepped into a wasps' nest. That was really dicey. My boss told me we had to play dead. They even crawl under your helmet. But we managed, none of them stung us," Philip remembers.

Critical glances at a dangerously loose boulder.(Bild: Tschepp Markus)

After 20 minutes and many small stones knocked away, the two of them arrive next to the new gate. They make their way to their colleagues, whose ropes they will now hold. "We strictly adhere to all safety regulations," says head mountain cleaner Jörg Eßl, adding that no man has been seriously injured in the past decades.

The team, which cleans 250,000 square meters of rock on five city mountains, is currently looking for a new employee. Hard work awaits him or her. It used to be even tougher, Hermann Grubinger knows: "30 years ago, we only had a rope around our stomachs and a wooden board between our legs."