Ticino – Part 2 from jorg verhoeven on Vimeo.

With the second part, and the last that is, there goes my friday afternoon… I now realize how lazy we actually were getting footage during our trip, but in the psyche of the moment it never comes to mind to set up a tripod. . . . → Read More: Ticino – finale]]>

Ticino – Part 2 from jorg verhoeven on Vimeo.

With the second part, and the last that is, there goes my friday afternoon… I now realize how lazy we actually were getting footage during our trip, but in the psyche of the moment it never comes to mind to set up a tripod. Hence the video has become nothing special, I’ll try to work on similar future projects. The opposite is to be said for getting good photos, especially thanks to Reini Fichtinger and Stefan Kürzi. Here a couple of appetizers:

Ticino – Part 1 HD from jorg verhoeven on Vimeo.

Our two week trip to Switzerland’s bouldering Mecca is over. A short bad weather spell left us with quite a bit of snow, but armed with broom and brush nothing could stop us from ticking a few projects on the last sunny days. . . . → Read More: Ticino – Continued]]>

Ticino – Part 1 HD from jorg verhoeven on Vimeo.

Our two week trip to Switzerland’s bouldering Mecca is over. A short bad weather spell left us with quite a bit of snow, but armed with broom and brush nothing could stop us from ticking a few projects on the last sunny days. After Katha setting the bar quite high with her flash of ‘Tricky’ 8A, I managed to rebound that by flashing the ultra classic ‘La Proue’ 8B…
Katha showed some more biceps on ‘Frank’s Wild Years’ 8A+ and the not to be underestimated classic ‘Arcadia sit’ 7C+, and I ticked off an old nemesis of mine: ‘The Dagger’ 8B/+. This problem has been in the media lately with quite a few ascents, and a proposed lower grade (not only by climbers but internet voices as well…), I still found it hard, especially to figure out a beta that suited me.

The video I’ve posted above is the first of two parts, and as you will see, we still have some problems filming with our new lens :)

Another year has gone by, and like I previously wrote 2012 was climbing wise not much different from the years before. I did a lot of competitions, a bit too many, but I only realized this towards the end of the season. I travelled even more, with an all-time-record of 14 inter-continental flights, . . . → Read More: 2012 – 2013]]>

Another year has gone by, and like I previously wrote 2012 was climbing wise not much different from the years before. I did a lot of competitions, a bit too many, but I only realized this towards the end of the season. I travelled even more, with an all-time-record of 14 inter-continental flights, hence a lot of jetlags and a Star Alliance Frequent Traveller status…
All those competitions stole most of my time to climb outside, and I will definitely change this in 2013. I’m catching up with my studies again, which is far from easy when you miss 50% of the courses, but I’m quite used to this, and so are my professors.
After a two week trip to Spain around new year’s eve, which was exactly what I needed (nice weather and good rock) I’ve already started my training for the next season. I will mainly do bouldering, and fewer lead cups, since that means a summer and fall with time to do other stuff. It keeps surprising me how high my motivation is, especially since lately a lot of things actually tempt me to quit competition climbing for good. I really hope that this motivation will stay with me, since it’s the only thing that’s keeping me going…

Before I start to rave over my future competition aspirations a quick word on Spain:
Together with Katha and a couple of other friends, I set off for Barcelona just before Christmas, realizing after a few days of climbing in the sun that it has been way too long I’ve come here. Spain in winter can simply be incredible. When at home everything is frozen you can be climbing in a t-shirt in Margalef. In spite of a slightly different ethic in using sika Spain offers loads of good quality routes at a high-end level, that are compared to the Alps super friendly in condition dependancy. I tried a lot of really hard stuff, but lacked the endurance to get past a certain border, somewhere around 8c/+. It has got to be so nice to come to these areas when fitness is at a normal level!

A friend of us came by to catch some stuff on camera for his incoming ‘Innsbrooklyn movie’. I think he will post some stuff on his website: Alpsolut. The movie must be coming out sometime this year. The capture picture is also his (H. Mair).

Like I said, I’ve started my boulder-training, which is in fact a little late, since the first cup is mid march already. The kickoff is in China, and is the only one I’m not sure of going. This will also depend on the plans of my federation, so I will know this later on. It strongly seems like I’ll be doing the worldcups on my own this year, different than the years before where I travelled and spent my time mostly with the Austrian team and a little with the Dutch team, but this probably won’t be possible anymore. I hope this will work out, since I hate travelling alone (especially far abroad), but I’ll give it my best shot.

Also training is not what I would like it to be. It sounds strange to me, but it feels like I’m getting old… Recovery is not what it used to be, and also my fingers don’t take as much strain as before. I’m injury free though, and that is a major change to a lot of the recent seaons. Funny is, that 5 years ago I could train as much as I wanted, but was often too tempted to go bolting some vegetated Zillertal slabs, and now I have no problem with spending a lot of time in the gym, but have to rest more often than I would prefer.

All in all I’m looking forward to a season that will not be easy to climb, but like I said: my motivation seems to be endless… Thumbs crossed.

To be honest, I’ve had no inspiration whatsoever to write anything for a long time now. What should I write about? Constantly writing about yourself is not that fun at all, especially when . . . → Read More: Test test test]]> Oh my, I almost forgot how to log in to this blog :) Let’s see if this old thing still worked.

To be honest, I’ve had no inspiration whatsoever to write anything for a long time now. What should I write about? Constantly writing about yourself is not that fun at all, especially when not much new stuff is going down. I’ve been climbing comps for over ten years, and now, and big surprise: I’m still in the game! Good old university is still asking for some hours learning how rocks form deep down below surface and then beg to be climbed. My life, except for a slight quarter life crisis that is of no interest to the world wide web, is kind of what it used to be.

Then one fine day I was surfing around, trying to regain a bit of motivation to train for the last comps – that keep on coming in spite of a feeling that my season ’12 has already ended – and was quite surprised what the climbing websites had to offer. Of course a lot of it was about numbers – and superlatives as always – which logically involves the great Wizard (mr Ondra that is), and then the casual people screaming around in loud electronical voices, to let everybody know their opinions, often based on very thick air.

So, training motivation had te be found elsewhere (on a snowy mountain, where else), but it got me in a mood to put in my tuppence worth to several themes swirling around the planet in bits and bytes, maybe more terabytes thesedays…Since very few actually made it across the upper text and were even willing to click the little link continue reading, I hope I don’t do nobody wrong – to be read in strong American accent.

In his usual trips of true carnage the Wizard has been setting the upper limits of modern sportsclimbing, alike a mission to take down all the hard routes the planet has to offer. Lately he visited the Red River Gorge (RRG), where he was not the only one pulling hard on its majestical sandstone crimpers. A fine selection of top climbers showed their skills on the local testpieces, which put a coin in the machine that sets the climbing internet rolling. Beside lots of merited praise the usual polemics on (down)grading started, and within no-time the RRG seemed to loose most of its charm. What suprised me, is that most talk is about how hard the high-end routes in this area really are, instead of pointing out their sheer beauty as well. I have seldom climbed routes as nice as these, which weighs ten times more than the question if we’re handling with a 14c or d. These climbers didn’t come to the Reds as an army to destroy soft grades, they went there and climbed those routes because other people told them: Go do it, these routes are first class!

Now don’t get me wrong, of course the question comes up about what grade a route deserves, like it did to me, after I climbed in the Reds, but to get lost at this point will put the rest in shade.

To point out my confusion and reason to lack of interest after a while, here’s my thoughts on grading some specific hard routes:
It only seems logical to compare routes to each other, in able to figure out its grade. For this, you need a benchmark. Since I haven’t climbed many hard routes I picked one which seemed the best to me: Hades 9a, several repeats, all seem to agree, the Wizard even said a tough one. Comparing this route with Pure Imagination, a proposed 9a in the Reds, it seemed quite similar. The amount of time it took me, the feeling of how near or how far this was to my limit, the style of climbing, it seemed to align. One on sight and one flash later the grade has dropped to (soft) 8c+. To me there’s a big difference between easy 8c+ and tough 9a, so where’s my comparison? Lost. That’s why I had dropped it already. To me it felt weird to be able to climb a route in a couple of tries, reaching the anchor with some fuel left, and believe this route was 9a, hence my correction of some of the routes I’ve done lately. To come to the point, 8c or 9a, maybe there’s something else about certain routes that is more important than a subjective number. And maybe even the Wizards opinion cannot always be taken for granted, as nowadays it seems to be new law. Even guys that climb a hundred 9a’s still have a teinted opinion, only a more trustworthy one, because they just have more comparison.

Another topic that quite angered me was the debates going on about competition climbing, mostly taken place on rockclimbing focussed websites. Statements were being made without sufficient – or any – information on the topic, routesetters and judges attacked (only verbally, don’t worry), always mixed with the theme of the day: the climbers’ olympic dream. To be honest, I am a strong critic of climbing competitions, and after a couple of years in the athlete commission trying to improve stuff, I’ve gotten pretty tired of messed up worldcups myself. But I don’t understand why people, after watching a couple of live streams, scream murder just because they think climbing competitions should be according to their ideas. Maybe it would be a good thing to keep in mind that quite a few souls within the IFSC and the national federations, as well as organizers themselves, have spent a long time pondering about different solutions for problems to be solved, and that lots of possible schemes have been thought over or tried out, until the current one was picked.

That surely wasn’t more than two pence,was it? A short inspirational moment to write something unimportant…

‘Take your weapons of mass destruction and get the hell outta here’, to quote Team America. My blog will probably be on a black list from now on.

Some might have guessed: We’ve left the States about a week ago, to go back home. The 180 days of our visa have expired over . . . → Read More: America fuck yeah!]]>

‘Take your weapons of mass destruction and get the hell outta here’, to quote Team America. My blog will probably be on a black list from now on.

Some might have guessed: We’ve left the States about a week ago, to go back home. The 180 days of our visa have expired over and we were kindly asked to clear out of the country, with a shotgun in the back :)

I couldn’t have expected more of trip. Of course it had its ups and downs (like Katha’s knee, the many split tips  and the four flat tires) but all’s well that ends well, and since especially the end of the trip felt like a holiday, I’m feeling fresh and psyched to be home, to all that awaits me here…

Our last days in America were spent in Boulder CO, where due to Katha’s knee injury (which has improved a lot already) we didn’t see a lot of rock, but a whole lot of gym holds. Boulder is America’s rockclimbing/training epicentre; in spite of its small size more and better gyms then all over the country pop up on every street corner. ‘Movement’, ‘The Spot’, ‘Cats’ are to name, so are its climbers like the Woods, Graham, Emerson, Payne, Traversi, Hill only to name a few. In short, we had a lot of fun, met some amazing people, went to some crazy food places (mostly very organic and scary) and got our asses back to some training ;)

To be honest, I also feel very sad to be back in Europe. We’ve had the best time overseas, also thanks to all the friendly people we met and climbed together with. I miss the perpetuous clear blue sky of the West, its crazily featured sandstone and immaculate granite with razorblade crimps. I even miss America’s food – who would have thought – at least some: Krispy Kreme’s doughnuts, beef jerky, El Pasito, Whiskey Creek, Schat’s Bakery, sweet potatos. I even miss our good old GMC van, in which we’ve lived the past five months.

Then again, it is just so incredibly good to sit on a couch again, sleep in a decent bed, take a shower whenever the f#ck I want. No more daily nosebleeding because of the dry air, no more cacti spikes in sleeping bags, no more 0° Fahrenheit at night. And the best: I can finally buy books again without the worry how to get them home together with the rest of our 200 lbs of luggage…

After our one month trip to Kentucky, our trip from Boulder to Boulder covered the last five months. We’ve driven around 8000 miles (~13000 km), but hey gas is about three times cheaper then over here, and since all the roads are straight, driving was a proper rest day. Many of the ten states we visited looked very much alike, since the West is one giant sandstone desert with a couple of granite patches, but still the places we visited were all unique.

And please don’t ask what place was the nicest to visit. Everybody does, and I never know what to answer… apples and pears are not compareble, nor are Hueco and Yosemite :)

Oh, and as a goodbye present, the Boulder police gave us our one and only ticket of our stay:

'Permit not visible'. Of course it should've hung down the mirror...

I would have just preferred to get pulled over this guy:

who's freaky deaky dutch

Yep, another video. don’t worry, it’ll be the last of our trip :) Although our stay in Joe’s Valley was ended after a week, because of Katha hurting her knee pretty bad, we had a good time in this area, which was totally different than the other places we went. Both Katha and . . . → Read More: Joe’s Valley]]>

Yep, another video. don’t worry, it’ll be the last of our trip :)
Although our stay in Joe’s Valley was ended after a week, because of Katha hurting her knee pretty bad, we had a good time in this area, which was totally different than the other places we went. Both Katha and me got a little tired of trying hard boulders, and were more into a little holiday time, but we could still do some classic problems like ‘Masterpiece’ 8B, ‘The Worm Turns’ 8A, ‘Fingerhut’ 7C+, ‘Nerve Extension’ 7C+ etc…

Like I previously wrote, we moved to Joe’s Valley after a couple of days fighting with Indian Creek’s prefect handcracks, fingerstacks and offwidths – especially the latter. At first we weren’t very much astounded by its high praised sandstone, since it is so incredibly sandy – big suprise. The classic problems were fun to climb, and especially the features the rock offers are amazing, but the not so often tried boulders were so sandy they were hardly climbable without some intensive brushing. Do not get me wrong, I love loose rock, but I would rather go to the Fisher Towers to get on some muddy and sandy chimneys if I was looking for that. In bouldering I (mostly) look for good rock, it is just not very nice blowing of holds or grabbing big sloper with a fist full of sand.

That was our first impression. When we came to agreement with that Joe’s opened up as a place with unique boulder problems in a beautiful location, and again, suprise surprise, the weather was amazing.

Bouldering? Who cares in a setting like this...

So we scanned the whole area, which is in fact pretty big, for problems we wanted to climb, and ended up doing a couple of classics:

The big swing in 'Masterpiece' 8B

Katha on Gurkha Knife 7C

‘Masterpiece’ is a brilliant problem on a giant boulder that sits by its own in the entrance of Joe’s Valley. There is only two problems, but they are both worth the hike and the scary topout. A striking diagonal crack features good holds but bad feet, which make this problem a bit burly, with lots of campusing involved. It felt easier than some other 8B’s but still needed quite an effort to finally wrench my foot in that starting hole.

Katha on 'Fingerhut' 7C+

Katha quickly dispatched a crimpy testpiece called ‘Fingerhut’ and the long roofproblem ‘Nerve Extension’, where a nice double clutch to the topjug offers a cool finish. Just when she was trying a very cool problem with two tiny one fingerproblems, her knee snapped so loud I thought the nearby tree broke down. After icing it, there was no swelling, and after a hospital visit in the middle of nowhere-Utah everything seemed to be alright.

No more bouldering though, so off we went to our final destination on our trip: Boulder, back in Colorado.

Katha and the amazing start hold on 'No Substance' 7C

a oversized hotdog. Me flashing 'The Worm Turns' 8A

No we’re not back in hueco, although I do miss El Pasito, Krispy Kreme and the one dollar movie theaters. This is just a small post on the Esperanza video, that has become really oversized, because its producer didn’t think of flipping his Iphone :)

Mr Bryan Boyko – aka double B – . . . → Read More: Esperanza interlude]]>

No we’re not back in hueco, although I do miss El Pasito, Krispy Kreme and the one dollar movie theaters. This is just a small post on the Esperanza video, that has become really oversized, because its producer didn’t think of flipping his Iphone :)

Mr Bryan Boyko – aka double B – is the man I’m talking about, famous for cruising through the hardest problems, but to fall at the easy topouts for many reasons like getting pumped, numbing out, forgetting beta, or a reason he sadly affected me with: victory blurr.

One day after brutally failing on ‘Terre de Sienne’ once more, we dragged our asses to the Martine cave, where to our surprise I sat down and stuck the bone move on Esperanza. Once more and then I sat down at the – quite weird but original – start of the problem, stuck the bone move again and got really confused, propr victory blurr, thanks double B. The last move made advantage of that to spit me off, but one try after that, this video was made, and in the weirdets of ways, I could do the last move, thus completing ‘Esperanza’ 8B+.

Completing I say, in spite of a slight dissatisfaction afterwards, when I found out that the topout only weighed in around V6, loose and a bit scary as it may be. In a previous post I wrote about bouldering topouts, and my opinion that it is always preferable to do one, even scary, dangerous, loose or wet ones, and since the start of Esperanza isn’t really logic in itself, the idea of course came up to do the whole thing, the Megarig as DG liked to name it. Well I tried, get fed up with it and failed, coming close, but to fall off the topjug again. ‘Megaranza’, which means ‘giant heap of shit’ in german is still to be climbed, I’ll have to come back for it.