Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Häller where we did Chapman, meanwhile two Norweigan guys climbed on the route beside us (mallorol) We didn't talk that much we mainly agreed on the superb quality of the routes we were climbing. When we were down on the ground we saw the Norweigans again, now toproping on the route Dreadline 9- r/x. We talked a little bit more about the route and after we had watched him fly up the route on toprope we said goodbye and went home. Today as I was surfing on the internet I red that there had been a serious accident at Häller with a young Norweigan guy involved.....
Bohuslän has already taught me alot about being careful instead of careless when it comes to go for the lead on a route. The harder routes here are mostly safe to climb but in generall the protection can be quite hard to find. Toproping routes first is a good idea and often necessary but apparently some times that isn't enough either.
A good example of a route that has safe but tricky protection is the route I did today called Mixing Matrix. The protection is bomber from bottom to top but tricky to find. After toproping it once, I knew what protection to use and where to put it. This meant that I could concentrate on the beautiful moves and still have a satisfying safety margin.
Almost two weeks ago I moved back to Sweden after three years in Chamonix and since a few days back I have been in Bouhslän to climb cracks on gear! The last week has been in other words been hectic and a big change in my life but the transition from Cham-Granite to Bohus-Granite is quite alright I must say :).
Unfortunately the weather has been quite bad but luckily we have been able to climb quite alot anyway.
We (Me and Mikael Abrahamsson) have been visting Granitgrottan which is an impressive and insanely steep sportclimbing crag with alot of cool lines that stays dry even in pouring rain.
However the last two days we've had some good wheater without rain so we managed to get some Bohus-Classics done. Thanks to the local Hanna-Kajsa we now have a massive tick list of good routes do when we are here.
Now we just hope for better weather so we can get out and tick some of them off the list!
I will try to upload pictures and text continuously.
Linus came with the suggestion to do Police des Glaciers on Pointe Alphonse Rye. Since I had not heard of the route and I didn’t have a clue of where it was, it sounded like a good opportunity to discover some new terrain around Chamonix. The next day we went for it.
For the approach we decided to use skies and worth mentioning here is that for more than 12 months I hadn’t had skis on my feet which got me quite exited about what it was going to be like. Of course I was very close to falling on my first turns, but after about five turns the whole situation felt more familiar and turning felt natural and relaxed again.
With skis the approach didn’t take more than 30 minutes compared to walking which would have taken us about 1-1,5 hours.
At the foot of the route it didn’t look very special but this climb had some really stunning crack pitches and it turned out to be one of the best multi pitches I’ve ever done.
I climbed the first pitch, a beautiful 6c+ crack with a pretty rough ending. On the second pitch Linus climbed an amazing 6c+ corner with a thin crack in it.
After that rough start we had an easier 5ish pitch which also was very nice; this is quite rare for a Chamonix multi pitch because usually there are a lot of crappy pitches in between the really good ones.
However after that we had another 6c+ pitch which started off in an offwidth for five meters and then a crux move past a little roof in to a nice crack that took you up to a big ledge. I linked this pitch with the next one which was the only quite chossy pitch.
The last 6c pitch looked quite thin and after a little while of consideration Linus handed over the leading to me. I started up slowly on some thin moves until I got to a run out between two bolts. I was hesitating a lot and wanted to get something in before I went on. I knew there was a bit of a move just before I could clip the next bolt and falling on that crux would not have been a nice experience, so I tried to fit some tiny stoppers in the crack and it took me a while before I got one in that I was satisfied with. This pitch turned out to be the crux pitch of the route for both me and Linus. The last pitch was a nice and also pretty tricky 6b that Linus led all the way to the summit.
Once we got down from the route we realised that we wouldn’t make it back to Aguille du Midi before they closed the lift. That would mean spending the night in the heated toilettes on the station. Not very appealed to the thought we decided to try and catch the last cabin with the Hellbronner lift on the Italian side. The lift would close half an hour earlier but considering it is much closer, we thought we could make it.
Skinning with our skis as fast as we could we were still very short of time when we only had a couple of hundred meters left. I put in another gear and when I had gone up all the stairs and tried to push the door open, it was closed.
Knowing that Hellbronner closes completely not even leaving an emergency room open for stuck mountaineers, we realised that this situation sucked.
So in a last effort to try to get down we banged on the door to see if anyone were still there. After a little moment an Italian lift guard showed up and opened the door for us. He told us we were lucky because he had already gone down ones but realised that he had forgotten his bag and there for had gone up again to get it and that’s when he heard someone bang on the door.
Grateful as we were to get down we chilled out at a café down in the village before we went to the Mont Blanc tunnel and quickly got lift back to Chamonix, by a very friendly couple.
