WHITE OUT & SUNNY SKY

swizzyweather is crazy sometimes. in chironico WHITE OUT  - is this allready the END of the chironico season?! for the last two weeks we had lots of rain what was bad, but SNOW is really BAD - it takes WAY longer to dry up.

webcam-view over chironico, 21-11-2010 - that looks BAD!!!

BUT there is still some hope: the weather-forecast does look pretty good for next week, hopfully its good enough to kill that snow again, we will see! for sure its still possible to climb on some boulders in the snow, but i dont really like it cause normally everything gets seeping wet or frozen. i prefer to make use of snow bit diffrently:

this is how to do it ;)  pic-source

but because of the mountains the weather in swizzy is HIGHLY regional. and as swizzy is so small it does not take too long to come from a snow-storm to sunny blue sky's. so you can sometimes just travel into antoher part of swizzy and find totally diffrent conditions and weather. like today in the valais.SUNNY and totally DRY. to bad i am lying at home with a flu :(

just a 3h ride from the snowy-ticino... sunny-martigny in the valais, area of the famous "radja"

not 20 anymore...

...just one restday and bad conditions do not fit together tooo wellllllllll for me.during 2days from going down at the last move twice to not beeing able to reproduce the first move anymore. well i did the move after 3hrs of working on it (and nearly climbing the standingstart in between) with a diffrent beta, from which i thought it woud be too hard???!!! bouldering sometimes is totally iliogical ;) at least it was a beautiful sunny morning as we were warming up - that really saved the day ;)

that f**** starting-move ;) pic by ronny

and with three restdays i climbed again to the last move... but thats "nothing", the real business starts right there.... - its slowly turning into (another) epic ;)

it cant get better, well it coud if it stayed like that for two weeks... 

back on the full "fish-project"

as its cooling down in the ticino, i was psyched to try those funky moves of the full "fish-project" in chironico again. in spring i climbed the two parts isolated, but was not able to link them yet.

and it looks like this is going to be another story of how small changes in BETA can make all the diffrence - and well, climbing "ikarus/deadalus" may was a good "training" too ;)


"emi" going for the move i went down on link three times allready, pic by angela wagner

the result up today: i managed to get a new highpoint and climbed up to the last hard move of the full line twice a day. but this last move is the crux. its a cool (violent compression) but a HARD one if you come from all the way down there!!! i have to climb in that move with 90% freshness otherwise i just can not do it. at the moment i may am at 70/80%. therefore i have first to build up bit more of "resistance" for the 14 RAD, delicate and super powerfull moves in front. the climbing up to that last hard move is arround 8B/8B+ for itself and therefore it is great to be able to climb twice a day so far. nevertheless i woud have had preferred to climb it just once but then one move further up ;)

beside the resistance that i am building up there are two "discoveries" that give me REAL confidence for the full line:

FIRST: in spring i went down several times in the middle of the "keinfisch/kleinfisch"-part. finally i figured out just slightly diffrent beta, but it helped a lot and i did not went down on that moves anymore. like that i was for the first time able to climb all the way up to the last hard move of the full line.



the move which i finally "understand" :)  pic by angela wagner



SECOND: the starting-move was and is very hard for me. back in spring the move worked sometimes pretty ok and i was able to do it up to 2-3times a day. but then on the next session it happend that it took me 2hrs to stick it again. that was crazy and somehow frustrating and despite trying everything to figure out what details made the diffrence between sticking and failing i just did not get it. then suddenly last weekend i did UNDERSTAND what i have to do. nothing funky that time, just VERY pricise body positioning. that new "micro-beta" does not make the move easy, its still very hard for me. but now the move is at 70% and not at 10% anymore and like that i can save a lot of energy. energy that i need badly for that last move to get on top of that "fish".

to spice things up: after that last hard move, there is even a nasty mantle and a delicate slab waiting - you have to go for the full package - NO "candy's" will be served with that "fish" ;)

anyway its nice to see something "impossible" transforming into very "possible" once again :)

"supertussi" and "macho, macho"

...after flying high with "deadalus" - i  escaped with my girlfriend from the arriving winter to the beautiful sunny fall in the southern swizzypart (ticino). we spent some time hiking, cycling and relaxing. we met some friends we did not see for a while and visited brione for a bit of bouldering too.

discussing beta on a brione-intermediate with andrea, the owner of the 1001-gite in cresciano

after repeating a lot of the the beautiful easy and intermediates i wanted to check out a project left of "atlantis" from which i climbed a straight-topout (first ascent of "supertussi") last year."supertussi" climbs up a very obvious nicelooking littel crack-line. the beta however is not that obvious. there are good holds but you permantetly have the "wrong ones" in your fingers. as i first tried to solve one of that "wrong-hands-problems" with a "karate-curx-move", my friends were just laughing at me: "you can NEVER do such a move..." was their comment. 1h later i had done the move for the first time - it was just a matter of the accurate micro-beta :) and that was exactly what i liked about "supertussi" so much. i just am not really interested in the "boring" left-right-left. it was another "3D-puzzle" to solve, which took some time but finally got put together.

That was back in 2008, but back then i was just not able to do the first move - no lack of beta - lack of power was the problem. last year i surprised myself by just doing the move first try back on the boulder and after 3days topping out "supertussi" ~8B'ish

back then when we figured out beta for the boulder we first wanted to exit to the right cause we did not found any usefull beta for the straightout exit. but then suddenly we found a way to go out straight ("supertussi"). so there was still the right exit to climb.

FA of "supertussi" back last year. its quite tricky and powerfull but if you get the beta the climb is pretty fun - exactly how i like it ;). the exit on the lip to the right ("macho, macho") is still an OPEN project.

the ending to the right felt harder then the famous "molonk" around the corner but isolated from the sds it went down pretty well. so i thought the right exit (over "apollo") woud be way easier then the straight-up and as i felt strong i thought that i coud do it pretty fast. my only concern was if i coud get the physical startingmoves together again. i was SOOOO wrong. the starting moves went down pretty ok, but after failing for three days on the last (2) move(s) i had to give in (for the moment). so much to "i just give that some tries - it will go down fast". consequently i gave the project the name "macho, macho" ;))

and the best after bouldering, supertussi's and macho's getting PIZZA ;)) 

¨

 





"story of two worlds" - a walk in the park?!

as the lowdown / 27crags.com are reporting; paul (super strong) robinson has climbed "the dagger" in cresciano. congrats to him!!! as he posted he finally found pretty good beta and that it felt like climbing an 8A into an 8A to him. that is somewhat interesting news. i know that i used WAY to hard beta as i climbed "the dagger". may that was kind of "stupid", but i had so much fun climbing "my" crazy beta that i just did not wanted to change it. it was my own little challenge if i may coud link it that way - and (after some epic with cold fingers and going down once on the 4a exit) i did link it the crazy-way ;)

starting the crazy and hard 180-turn (with my "stupid" beta) to climb the second part of the "dagger" head first. GREAT, HARD FUN like that :) pic by angela wagner

anyway with my (to hard) beta for the first part the dagger i felt like climbing a (hard) 8B into a 7C/+. so despite knowing my beta for the first part was way too hard i am really wondering how (beta) one can bring that down to 8A???!!! BUT if there is a beta which brings the first part to the same difficulty as the second part, then i am super happy, as the second part really felt like a "walk in the park" for me (fits perfectly my compression-addiction). and as the sds shoud also be in the same grade (according to paul) THIS woud then be: 3 times a "walk in the park" for the full line - the "story of two worlds".

---> THAT means i am off to cresciano; i have to take a "walk in the park" ;)))

but there is a funny thing about "his math". according to paul: 8A + 8A = 8B. neverendingstory in avers (with the best beta/conditions) is supposed to be 8A + 7C+ = ???? what grade do we get by using that math? Hard 8A+ ?! but paul has 8B+ for neverendingstroy?! somehow that "math" does not really work - like many grading-stuff that does not work as it is supposed to... ;)

out of nowhere - the (near)send of another lifetimeproject

you know these days when you climb with your friends, its not perfect conditions but just nice to be out bouldering. then you head to one of your projects on which you just want to "work" a bit on the moves, getting used to them again, getting strong again. the moves feel still hard but ok, even the sequences work BUT you KNOW you are NOT in THE shape for it yet.

unusual quickness; 2short sessions - beautiful "salamandre", ticino, pic by angela wagner

then you give a try for the crux-move (starting-move). first you miss (like most of the time) - then SUDDENLY you stick it, you continue - it feels hard but ok and somehow you just dont get that tired at all. you climb up to the LAST HARD MOVE - ready to STICK it - then suddenly your foot slips and you go down to your pads...

one of the few that did not end in an epic, may cause its just a 7C these days ;)
" freak brothers", chironico - one of the BEST, pic by angela wagner

..so it was obviously NOT THE perfect day as i missed that last hard move. but it was still a GREAT day as i nearly climbed a supposed to be another "life-time-project" just like that. i never exprienced something like that before.(well there was some "work" i put in in spring. but that's a long time ago). but somehow that woud have not been "me" - i usually MUST do an EPIC out of (nearly) every hard boulder i try - and it just looks like i am on the best way to another EPIC... - or may not - i will know more after the weekend...

no epic here as well, just some tries for the GREAT "kirk windstein" - cresciano, pic by angela wagner

as a result of that crazy "NEAR-send", the endorpines just don't stop flowing through my body - cant sleep, want to BOULDER - PSYYYYCHEEEEEDDDDDDDD ;))))