Eckbachfall: the variation instead
The Eckbachfall proper was the plan, but the ice hadn't formed well enough.
Machine-translated from the German original. The German version is the one I actually wrote.
The plan was the Eckbachfall itself. The ice hadn’t grown well enough though — no surprise in January after a mild December.
So the variation next to it.
That’s the normal case in ice climbing rather than the exception. You set off with a plan and decide on site what’s actually there. Insist on climbing exactly the line in the guidebook and you’ll spend a lot of winter standing around.