After two days in Tres ponts with very cold nights, up to -12, we continued to Vilanova de Meia were we found a supernice little crag. We spent another two days here and did some really nice routes!
After seven days we had our freinds Björn and Bengt comming from Sweden to join us for the rest of the time in Spain. We stayd another few days in Catalunya before we went south to Margalef!
Base camp in Vilanova de Meia
Dawn at the same base camp with a big multipitch crag in the background
With renewed motivation it’s time to start writing again. The past few months has mainly involved training, work and travelling. I feel like I’ve finally settled down in Stockholm and it starts to feel more and more like my new home base. To summarize what has happened I’ve started to work with climbing courses at Klätterverket which has given me a lot of valuable experience. I’ve become a certified indoor instructor which was a natural and fun step to take. Next step is to do the final test to become a certified outdoor instructor. To get some more experience as an instructor I am going to work for Guidebyrån this summer. Guidebyrån is a nice little company based in central Stockholm with a good atmosphere that is providing a vast selection of climbing-, kayaking- and ice skating courses with high quality instructors. Check out more about what they are doing here http://www.stockholmsguidebyra.se/.
Last week I came home from three weeks of climbing in Spain and what a beautiful place that is! I went with my good friends Sabine, David, Ted, Björn and Bengt. Bengt, our personal guide for the trip, showed us some very nice spots around Lleida and I will post some pictures here in the weeks to come starting today.
Setting up base camp in a wineyard outside Lleida. The first couple of nights surprised us with cold weather down to -12!
First climbing day at Tres ponts just north of Oliana, such a nice and cool day
My god friends Andreas and Bjarne are living their dream in South Amerika. Their goal is to climb and ski some of the highest mountains in a number of countries. Everything is well documented on their blogs for us "ordinary Mortals" to follow in a sofa on a safe distance with a bowl of popcorn.
Another stunning day on the midi, this time we tried the route Super Dupont on the south face. Due to evil clouds in the distance we decided to only try the upper half of the route. I was mainly interested in the 7b crux pitch so it didn’t matter that much anyway.
Mike started up the first pitch which had a quite stiff 6a+ roof section in it. After that I tried the crux pitch which was a cool and pumpy undercling into a weird finger crack, I struggled my way up it and really wanted another go but the ever present clouds and the fact that it had snowed on us just a few minutes earlier made me give up that thought and we continued up the last two pitches to the top.
I knew my time in Chamonix was coming to an end and I wouldn’t have time to go back and try it again this year.
I guess it’s good to have some stuff to come back to as well :)
Back in Stockholm again after a month of climbing in Bohuslän. Even though our timing with the weather has been horrible I must say we've had a very good time and my goal to get a hint of what I could do on trad was still quite succesful. I got to do some really nice onsights and redpoints like Torline, Masken, Afterburner, Mixing matrix, and Chapman. Bohuslän has so many beautiful lines and I think I'm mostly impressed by the grand wall of Hallinden which has so many perfect cracks that are really challenging and mostly well protected.
Häller in all it's grace is from a distance a very stunning peace of rock and even though it houses some great routes it's definately not my first choice of crag. I found crags such as Galgberget, Välseröd, Ulorna and Hallinden much more pleasent and charming with there lawns, open suroundings and the amount of world class routes.
I have already gotten myself some unfinished business here so I got to go back soon.To be honest I really don't see any reason for going anywhere else in the world for singlepitch trad climbing anyway.
I feel like I want to say something more about the extremly bad weather of september 2011.. But I guess it's just redundant to say anything more than that it wasn't favorable to climbing. This is also a reason to why the documentation of the trip hasn't been very substantial and that's why I'm now posting a clip of Prince doing a world class performance by soloing like no climber could ever do.
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.
