Take two :) First Ascent of "Nike, 8B+", Brione, Swizzy

just managed to send another one of my multiyear-projects - it was one of the oldest undone projects left in brione - i tried it since 2008 - finally climbed it now in 2014 - but be careful: it is a real greek goddess; beautiful to lock at, but very tricky and brutal to fight with... don't mess with her... ;)  happy times - i could get used to that... :) 

it looks nice in daylight as well: FA of "Nike, 8B+", brione, swizzy. pic by angelawagner.ch

there was a lot of rain the last few days and many of the visiting climbers escaped swizzy and/or went to mellobloco. but weather in swizzy is pretty unpredictable and out of the nowhere we got a short window of crazy foen-wind that dried everything in a few hours and pleased the climbers with some of the best conditions ever!!! 

on the send... - you can not see the friction - but believe me: it was crazy!!! you literally just had to hang on the holds... ;)

lucky enough i had a few days left from my holidays. together with angela we made the four hour trip down into the verzasca valley where i managed to climb one of the oldest undone projects left in brione. there was always waiting that crack-line in that little roof at the "atlantis"-boulder. it sit's in the middle of a lot of classic problems, it was tried by many and thought to be "impossible" as time passed. but that made it even more appealing. it looked like a great puzzle to be solved. together with a friend we solved the puzzle and unlocked the sequence already back in 2008. it took some time and effort and at the end of 2009 i  managed to put up the straight line following the crack: "supertussi, 8B" (still unrepeated, hardest crack-boulder out there?) but fell off many times on the last hard moves on the line we originally wanted to climb.... thanks to angela spotting my back and the perfect friction i managed to pull it together this time in a great night-session... First Ascent of "Nike, 8B+" was in the bag. 

ready for the second crux in "Nike, 8B+", brione, swizzy. pic by angelawagner.ch

I started sitting on a big pad to reach an ok-start hold. but there is an obvious low-start to this line. it involves a heinous one-finger-lock to get into another heinous one-finger-lock (are there non-heinous-one-finger-locks?) in the crack and some footwork to get to the position from where i started. it certainly makes the following moves way harder (at least for a non-crack-boulder-pussy like me). i was close on doing the move from the low but i need to work on my pain tolerance, get a sponsorship from ibuprofen and i may have to visit the "wide boyz" to get some proper finger-crack-training as well.... ;)