The first day we started climbing in sector Kühlschrank:
EAER 22, UIAA VI, nice climbing, plenty of bolts!
Badesalz, UIAA VI+, good crack and dihedrals. good to protect!
Purple Haze, UIAA VII, nice hand crack with interesting finish!
Toxoplasma, UIAA VIII-, hard fingercrack, auauaua....
We went to the Schiffsbug afterwards:
Mettwürstchen, UIAA VII+, nice and long route!
Pummelchen, UIAA VI, nice route with thin hands at the finish!
Next day we started again at the Schiffsbug:
Flowerstreet, UIAA VI+, nice clean route with harder start, rest is just fun!
Sister Rosa, UIAA VII+, brilliant route with offwidth start, than hands! pure fun!
we continued at the Kranwand and Dürener Wand:
Kranwand, UIAA VII, dihedral with painful finger crack, again auauauauauaua...
Harakiri, UIAA VII-, again fingers.... with cool move from the finger crack to the left, happy with the handjam ;-)
Seepferdchen, UIAA VIII+, thanks for the toprope to the german guys, really nice route, we are working on it...
Total vertan, UIAA VII-.
Handriss, UIAA VI, definitely no handjam, if you have small hands sometimes fist, but normally cups... difficult climbing. At the end of the climbing day were painful experience - we like that ;-)
After my failed attempt on Fegefeuer a few weeks ago I went back to the Eifel last tuesday. It was hot, but during the day there is enough shade in Ettringen when you are on the right place at the right time.
We started early in the morning at the left part of sector "Kühlschrank", and even then it wasn't particularly cool... After climbing "training for Utah" where I flew off totally unexpected we went for climbing Aucune Plaquette. Eoin onsighted that route!
After that we went to the right part of sector "Kühlschrank", and in the shade it was nice climbing! We climbed "Hulk", VII+, the bulge halfway is pretty tough for the grade but really nice route!
We went to the "hell", we expected sun but it was 13.00 PM or so and the route "Fegefeuer" was in the shade, and again: Eoin onsighted that route (steep fingercrack, UIAA VIII). This time with a lot of motivation from the guys below I managed to pass the crux above the small roof and I went straight to the top! HAPPY!
Last route we tried was "Seepferdchen", beautiful route, UIAA VIII+.... the lower part was pretty good but the last 5 meters with ringlocks and very bad foot holds is hard! We'll be back!
I have been a few times to Ettringen... as usual, the more you climb the better the climbing...
A few weeks ago I finally climbed Oger, VIII- in the Finsterlay. Great route with a tough handjam start and a difficult fist jam upper part - especially if you have small hands like I do. With the heavy no.4 cams I managed to climb it free! Great! As a warm-up I climbed Feuertaufe VII+ clean and readpoint. Also very nice!!!
Last week I almost send Fegefeuer, VIII-, great fingercrack in the "hell". I slipped in the crux, it was very wet after some rain. Next time I will send it for sure!
Yesterday we tried different new routes. I onsighted a few of them:
"training for Utah", V-, sector Kühlschrank
"Aucune Plaquette", VII, great handjam in sector Kühlschrank
"Gash", VII, cool short fingercrack at Dürener Wand
"Mettwürstchen", VII+, I flew out just 2 metres below the belay, great long route at the Schiffsbug
"Mayflower", VIII-, hard handcrack at the amphiteatre, well-known route in Ettringen, pretty tough though!
Training for Utah, unfortunately very short...
Gash, cool ringlocks and laybacking...
Oger, VIII-, Finsterlay, best crack climbing sector evereverever...
Fegefeuer, VIII-, in the hell, good as hell, yeah....
Aucun Plaqette, VII, great climbing, Kühlschrank...
Great climbing week in Sicily. Camping La Bahira in San Vito lo Capo. I climbed some 6c and 6c+ onsight. Great rock - limestone and granite!
Cool climbing destination!
6a+ at the grotta di palma, white granite/marmer...
steep and polished red limestone 6a+ at sector pipeline
red peroni, 6c+ sector pipleine.
The climbing is great. I am not a pro but I saw a lot of rust on the bolts... steel quality? sea salt? the protection was sometime at least doubtful....
Once again Ettringen! Really nice, getting more and more comfortable in the steeper cracks. I climbed "Seinesgleichen geschieht"(VI+/VII-) and "Presskopf" (VII-/VII) without using the bolts. Clean climbing as it goes. We also trained on "Mjoelnir" and "Feuertaufe". Great day.
once again really nice fotos from Mike, he's a talented photographer as well!
Nice surprise this weekend: we went to the reopened crags in Sy/Ardennes.
At the rocher de Vignobles we found some nice limestone routes in the grade 4/5a. A bit more to the right I spotted a pretty cool crack with some bolts. Luckily I took a rack of cams and nuts with me - but I didn't expect to use them.
One of the locals there suggested to try this trad route - something around 6a/6b. I'm not sure. The climbing was really nice. The lower part is a bit fist jamming and the upper part has small hands and finger. There also enough options for laybacking. I really enjoyed, nice surprise!
Nice update on the Belgian crags here: https://nkbv.nl/fileupload/sportklimmen/klimgebieden/2017-01-10_Toegang_klimgebieden_Belgie.pdf
First jam session of the year!
Yesterday Mike and I went to Ettringen. In my opinion Finsterlay is the best jam spot. Plenty of nice crack routes between UIAA VI and VIII.
We climbed "Blutiger Samstag", "Seinesgleichen Geschieht", "Presskopf" and "Feuertaufe". Great to be back in the Eifel!
After my short visit to Beez last weekeind this was my second rock climbing day! Let's hope that the weather will be good the weeks for some nice climbing!!!
Last year I hadn’t been to Kandersteg for ice climbing – too
warm - no ice. The year before I climbed the Haizähne with Bernd and Crack Baby
with Rolf. The ice seasons changed in the last ten years. When I started ice
climbing it was not unusual to find enough ice in Kandersteg even before
christmas. This years ice climbing season started in the second week of
januari. Last week we had four pretty cool ice climbing days. When we left on
Sunday it should get warm again next week with temperatures around 5-10 degrees
during the day and at night not below zero. Maybe this is the end of the ice
climbing season 2017: not more than 4 weeks!
Anyway, we had a cool program:
Wednesday:
Arbonium (WI 5-) and Pingu (WI 5+).
Thursday: easy trainingday on Grimm and first
pitch of Eiszwerge (WI 3-4).
Friday: Rübezahl (WI 6).
Saturday: Eiszwerge (WI 5+, M6).
I leadclimbed all
the hard pitches. Rübezahl has three steep pitches comparabel with Crack Baby
at the Breitwangfluh. The second steep pitch was really nice and exposed
ice climbing. We didn’t climb the last two easy pitches because of growing spin
drifts (60 cm fresh snow on sunday, northern exposition and more than 5cm fresh
snow that day). Good reason to come back!
The Robert Jasper
route “Reise in das Reich der Eiszwerge“ is a pretty cool mixed/ice climb in
Kandersteg. According to one of the local mountain guides the best mixed
route in this grade! Very airy traverse out of the cave of the „ice dwarfs” on
a slab with 1 or 2 cm of soft ice. There
are two pitons and I placed also some small friends. The climbing itself
is not very hard but technical. Really nice. For Peter this was pretty tough to
follow. He wanted to go down after that pitch. So we didn’t finish the final
ice ramp (80 degrees). Also a good reason to come back.
For me this was a very very satisfying trip, cool routes
together with my brother and the first two days also with Bernd. Thanks guys.
We spent our nights at the Gemmi Lodge – very kind owners
and nice European prices (35,00 Sfr per night incl. breakfast). It’s also
possible to cook for yourself!!! www.gemmi-lodge.com
early morning start at Arbonium...
first pitch, very wet...
really wet...
Bernd leading the first pitch of the upper part of Pingu
from the upper belay through a hole to start the final steep pitch of Pingu...
Peter getting his lead climbing training at the first pitch of the Eiszwerge
Next morning at the start of Rübezahl - exciting!
In the first pitch of Rübezahl - the first belay is on the left at the large ledge. Belay of the second pitch is in the hole on the right almost at the top of the waterfall. Thereafter it's another steep 25 meters where the waterfall angle eases, then it's another 15 m to the belay on the right (not on the left as indicated in the guidebook)
yeah, very steeeeeeep second pitch!~One of the best pitches I ever climbed...
tea time, concentrating for the last steep pitch...
last steep pitch while rappeling, good food holds, but the ice itself was fragile and protection was not always easy...
Rappeling from the second belay in the hole...
next morning Peter leading the first pitch of Eiszwerge again!
second pitch to the upper part of the large ledge
welcome to the cave of the ice dwarfs - actually there was only this dwarf at home, I don't know where the others were...
start of the crux pitch, airy traverse to the left out of the cave and on thin ice up...
