After the last few weeks bouldering venues up in Col De Montets and down in the forests of Argentiere I’ve managed to find myself three really good and for me hard projects, all of them probable first ascents.
Me and Jonny have been out trying them one day now and with some beta exchange I think we both felt relatively close on at least one o them.
A boulder just five minutes walk from my home
Jonny on another projekt that has one really hard move
It's weird how this problem is possible, the holds are soooo tiny but still it's not a crazy hard problem
A few weeks ago me and Jonny went down to Les Vuardes to try a sportroute called "Papy fait de la résistance". Since we're both on pretty much the same level the plan was to try something that was going to be a real challenge for us both and so it was.. The pitches of the route went like this 4c, 6c+,6c,7b,7a,7a,7a+,7a+. When Jonny had to hang on the first 6c+ pitch we started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into :). We didn't manage to free much of the route, but we were close on most of them. The climbing was world class and I would love to go back and try freeing the whole thing!
Freehanging abseils down to the start of the route tells about the steepnes of the route.
Me and my girlfriend Michelle went out for a strole a few days ago in the forests outside our place in Argentiere. After a little while of random walking we bumped in to a few boulder blocks that to me looked very climbable and seemed to house high quality boulder problems. Excited about what we’ve found I went home to see if I could find them in the guide book, surprisingly I didn’t. A few hours later I was back and brushed up some of the lines and did them with a smile on my face realising that those problems were even better than I thought.
The day after I went out with my friends Bjarne, Heather and Jonny to show what I had found and we managed to (establish) another few really nice boulders between 5+ and 7a-ish!
Something tells me that those boulders must have been climbed before. But the fact that I couldn’t find anything in the guide and that they didn’t hold any signs of climbing activity such as chalk or tick marks and that obvious holds where crumbling of as we tried them got me thinking, that maybe people had just walked past them on their way to the bigger areas that lies in the close surroundings.
However if we have done some FAs I’m super stoked and if we haven’t I‘m equally stoked to have done some top class boulders :).
So the day after we had been to The Gorge, me and Eva decided to go up on Aguille du Midi to do the premier multipitch for the summer. The choice of route fell on Contamine on the south face of the Midi
because of the great climbing, the easy approach and the fact that when you’re done you end up just by the lift station again.
The south face of Midi houses roughly about 15-20 multipitches with more than hundreds of variations and the climbing is generally top class. This included with the facts mentioned above makes the place really nice and just as convenient as it could ever be, bearing in mind that from a 1000 meters (village level) to get up on 3848 m and climb a 250 m multipitch you don’t even have to walk more than a 100 m. Unique!
Racking up.
Aiming for the top.
Having a lunch brake before the crack pitch.
And Eva charching up the last burley pitch.
Maybe one of the projekts for the summer is called digital crack..
Back in Chamonix once again for the summer. Now we just hope for good climbing wheater and that the three day long slush storm will come to and end. So please King Bore, take a sleeping pill (or just decapitate yourself) and let the summer gods take over.
Me, Andrew, Kelly, Eva and Bjarne all went to Gietroz or “The Gorge” as it’s more commonly referred to. This is a steep overhanging crag and a lot of the routes tend to have strenuous moves between undercuts, in other words a good place for people with biceps like Arnold Schwarzenegger (spelling?).
While gearing up at The Gietroz parking lot we couldn’t imagine what at big day it was going to be, but when we got back Eva had managed to do Reve de Singe, her first 8a, I had managed to onsight “In Absentia” 7b which Bjarne also did a few minutes later on his second go. A really good day all in all!
Sorry for the lack of activity the last month. The fact that I have been running a blog without owning a computer with internet has made the whole thing a bit more troublesome than it should have to be. Climbing without climbing shoes might be a good equivalent. However, I’ve now bought a CANON G12 POWERSHOT CAMERA and anyone who knows anything about anything is aware that you can’t go through life without having one of those in your possession (Read: gadget nerd and simply slave to the consumption society). Ok with that said lets talk about stuff that matter J.
I’ve spent about 3 weeks in Stockholm in May and maybe I didn’t get quite as many days of climbing as I planned but still a few really good ones! What struck me the most was the high quality of the routes on mostly technical granite.
Recommendations
Megadans, Skevik 7c
Non-stop, Skevik 7b
Freaky Deaky, Nacka Kvarn 7b
Totalvägra, Nacka Kvarn 7a
Lutande Tornet, Nacka Kvarn 7a
We also spent one day bouldering in Ågesta over which area they recently released a new guidebook. The guide is nice with clean graphics, pictures and funny little anecdotes. The only and quite negative thing is that it doesn’t offer any English translation not even for road description.
Enough said, now enjoy the prodigious quality of my Canon G12 Powershot pictures.
A super nice boulder, couldn't find it in the guide though. About 5a-b.
Michelle looking cool.
Me trying to look cool
Barbahög 6b+, a realy nice highball
You got to love the highball action:)
Stockholm has lots of small little crags spread out around the city and most of them are easy to reach with public transports, a week pass including busses and trains is about 30 euros.
So after almost five months in Chamonix I am back in Sweden to check in with family and friends again! It's always nice and mellow to come home! As always I couldn't wait more than one day before I was eager to get out to the blocks around my home town and try my new won powers. And as always I get so screwd on the boulders at home. This time I went to the classic Hulta-block a.k.a "the boulder sent from heaven" with my little red home made crashpad (read: thin sleeping pad with a badly sewn cover). I tried a few problems and realised it wasn't a good warm up to have driven for 22 hours from chamonix to sweden yesterday, so without any luck I went home again and more or less slept for 15 hours.
However I am soon going up to Stockholm to meet up with my brother and try the sport climbing up there, so psyched!
