Looking back ... and forward

After a few months of updating this Peakr thing & staying real close to the climbing news I'd like to look back and give a roundup of the ice climbing news. I'll end with two things that have kept my mouth watering for Canada.

Iceland ice climbing expedition

Last week while at the Dalai Lama's lunch I had a short chat with a colleague of my girlfriend and she'd been to Iceland. Somehow I was convinced that Iceland only had one big ring-road around the island but that seems wrong. She crossed Iceland right down the middle. I've always been wanting to go there & the important take-away message from that lunch was that flight prices are becoming reasonable. A couple hundred euros where that same flight was a dozen green ones or so 10 years ago. No need to explain why I'd like to go to Iceland, I guess ...

Wild Underground Ice Climbing in Sweden

With all of my recent CO2 contributions whilst skydiving I start to fear that soon most ice climbing will be limited to a few places if we keep this global warming thing going. Ummm ... maybe a business opportunity: carbon offsets for the outdoor adventure market?

Looking a little through the Peakr archives I found this ...
Some interviews with: Charlie Fowler, Will Gadd & Kevin Shields

One recurring type of news on Peakr is the opening of new lines:

Demanding new mixed line on Ben Nevis, Chamonix sees more mixed activity

And there's always the news that just baffles you: Kevin Shields M10 solo

This year's Banff mountain festival winner was a mixed climbing picture.

As you can see, this Peakr thing is becoming soms sort of a personal bookmarking service & I'm having a lot of fun updating the site. When you're a techie it's good to be away from reading yet more linux & programming stuff. At least at home.

Finally, I'm very much looking forward to Canada & having a go at Polar Circus (Video + Part 2)

Indian summer

Two weekends with excellent weather have made outdoor life go well again.

Last sunday I went for a walk with a good friend in the east of Belgium. As there are a lot of steep hills and woods in that part of the country, both orientation skills and physical condition had some excercise. It was also a testcase for my ice climbing boots; I found out what's wrong with them so my feet always start hurting after a while when wearing them. I will write later on this boots topic, as I get the problem solved.

Yesterday was time for another day of old fashioned rock climbing at the Rocher de Neviau, near Dave. While I have climbed there a lot many years ago, this crag has become one of my least favorites over the last years because of its often polished holds and overcrowdiness. The reason we went there yesterday nevertheless was because my climbing partner of the day, Geert Gijsbrechts, needed to prepare a lesson he has to give there next week.

So we started by walking down the crag in search for a spot for Geert's lesson, but bumped into Eddy, an older climber performing access controls. Nothing wrong with that of course, since we are both members of the Belgian Alpine Club for years.
I had never met this man before, only heard about him; he is also a regular guest on BCN. But he turned out to be very talkative, and it took us some time before we finally got into climbing.

We noticed the crag didn't get overcrowded at all, even while it was a very nice day where you should expect a lot of climbers. It even made me thinking about reconsidering returning there more often. The polishing of the rock is not worse than elsewhere on popular -and overfrequented- Belgian crags after all.

Of course there are other drawbacks that might cause people not climbing there anymore, like a noisy road right underneath, and the fact that most bolts are old and often far apart, which probably frightens today's -spoiled- sports climbers. Or maybe our friend Eddy is keeping them away with his frequent access controls.

Almost all Belgian climbing crags are bolted, since most rock is naturaly very badly suited for natural protection, either because of lack of cracks and stuff to place gear, either because of the rock wearing of too quickly when placing and removing gear over and over. So we have a long term bolting tradition, and a lot of Belgian climbers never got into trad climbing at all, being used to bolts everywhere. Where bolting in Belgium originated in traditional pitons left in place for the next climbers, to avoid rock wear, today's climbers seem to get more and more used to very well protected routes, and back out when bolts are father than a couple of meters apart.

This bolt distance (lack of) engagement thing bothers me, although I can understand climbers don't want to trust old rusty or even moving pitons, being in place for many decades. The problem with Dave is that you need an environmental permission nowadays to place anything permanent, even a bolt, and that obtaining this permission is taking a long bureaucratic way. So CABBAC and the Rebolting Team have to wait for this before doing anything about the old bolts and stuff, otherwise a total climbing prohibition may be the result.

So we engaged in some nice longer routes, which were most enjoyable in the sun. Training is to be fun, isn't it?

Free Tibet ! ... Kinda

Last Friday I had the opportunity to got to Munster to attend a lecture given by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso about 'Universal responsibility in science and technology'. Even though this blog post is not about climbing, I think a lot of climbers will be interested since there is a clear overlap between the Free Tibet movement and the climbing/outdoor world. A lot of climbers I met support the cause for a free Tibet & the topic keeps popping up in discussions. So, here we go ...

On a personal an ethical level it is easy to identify with this man. He preaches practical ways to live a meaningful life based in reason, not in faith. To me, that's the number one reason of the relative popularity of Tibetan buddhism in the Western world. We westerners (should I say European westerners?) like to think about ourselves as rational beings able to come to conclusions about life without having to resort to some external deity. We're individualists, we like to think for ourselves, we like to defend our individual freedoms. So when a spiritual leader comes and says "Don't do unto others what you don't want to be done unto you." we identify with him.

And he knows this. Because he is a media king and knows exactly how to play the media to further his goals. He's playing the role of underdog very effectively. Something that is not hard to do given the inacceptable human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party.

At the end of the day he spent a good deal of time talking politics.

A free Tibet is no longer the official party line of the government in exile, instead they are asking for a Tibet with meaningful autonomy where the important decisions are made by the indigenous Tibetans and not the imported Han Chinese. So next time you see a fellow climber arguing to 'Free Tibet', update them on the current situation.

His holiness acknowledged that the Chinese have brought material prosperity to Tibet but he mainly lamented the lack of spiritual independance and a huge lack of self-rule with e.g. the majority of Lhasa's inhabitants being Han Chinese now. Make no mistake, Tibet was not the peaceful mountain state before the communist party invaded, but that is no excuse for what has happened there.

In the morning about 20 people from the graduate school had the opportunity to as questions related to science to the Dalai Lama. Broadly two topics were touched upon: life termination in the name of science (animal rights, animal testing, embryonal testing, abortion) and the mind / body duality and its relation to neuroscience. On the first topic he surprised me with his non-dogmatic, level-headed views. In some cases animal testing is ok, in some cases abortion is acceptable, etc ... BUT every individual case needs to be considered and its merits / demerits weighed. I found the second topic a lot more interesting but unfortunately he did not have enough time to really expand on it. Especially his acceptance of scientific arguments that mind really is formed in the brain all the while explaining that different states of mind (sleep, meditation, wake, etc ...) can be achieved and that this does not threaten his buddhistic beliefs were impressive. Conclusion: even though I'm not a religious person, I wish more religious leaders were as level-headed as the Dalai Lama. (I'm looking at you Benedict !)

So, in conclusion, how do climbers relate to the fight for Tibetan independance?

I think we should try to be more than mere tourists in the places we visit. Just like i'm contributing my bit to the environment by making Peakr a member of One Percent for the Earth I encourage everyone to contribute to goals they deem worthy. Make sure climbing is more than a way to seek cheap thrills. Make sure your climbing travels are more than mere tourism. For me, this means staying a member of Amnesty International and contributing to One Percent for the Earth since I believe fighting for universal human rights and protection of the environment are worthy causes.

Maybe we should try to contribute something while we are in Canada?

What kind of climber is nonkel V?

For the occasional people who would like to know about my climbing, but in the first place to refresh and backup my own memory, I started to write down a "climbing resume". This turns out to be quite hard sometimes, since I never really kept a log or similar.

Now I do keep a log, at least of my climbing outside Belgium. The Climbers Log Book I got as a welcome present from the MCofS last winter is the katalysator that made me think about it and finaly made me start writing down my climbing journeys.

You might wonder why only "outside Belgium"?
To be honest, I'm not sure about this myself yet. I usualy indicate my routes in the guidebook myself, and if I'm not to lazy, put them in the BCN route database. Going climbing outdoors here is mostly a one day out trip, like other people go biking or walking on a sunday afternoon. I'm definitely not the type to patiently "work" on one route for ages.

In fact I mainly subscribe to the climbing philosophy I heard in South Africa: "If you don't succeed a route, try another one! There's more than plenty of them!"

Or as another climber once put it: "Either you can climb a route, either you can't.
I'm not sure about his exact words (therefor I don't put his name) but this philosophy is definitively not a modern sports climbing one.

Sometimes I put some quite radical and perhaps slightly shocking statements, I realise. One of them may be the one that there's only two kinds of climbing: the one where you're allowed to fall, and the one where you shouldn't. More and more climbers climb harder and harder routes, but stick to the first category, where good protection, like bomber bolts and thick crashpads, is omnipresent.

Once you go beyond that, whether it be in alpine mountaineering, harder trad climbing, exposed bouldering or... iceclimbing, you get into category 2: here falling is not a part of the climbing anymore, and might result in some harm.

I believe in our over secured day to day world today, the remains of our human instinct miss the excitement of the "struggle for life", and that's one of the possible reasons why people go climbing, motorracing, skydiving,... to get back some thrill in their lives.

Petzl Recalls Sarken crampons

Trailspace brings the news that Petzl is recalling some of their crampons. I don't think I know anyone who uses these crampons. I use Grivel crampons and Jo has his nice monopoint ones which use a different binding system if I'm correct. Check that before we leave, Jo ! Because the description does not sound nice: "This means cracking of the metal forefoot near the front point(s), followed by possible breakage if usage continues." ... Spread the word .

Photography & filming in the cold

Had a chat with Wannes this morning, mainly about photographic issues.

It always seems to be a problem combining serious climbing with taking decent photographs, left alone filming, especially when you are a party of two. Either you are climbing, either you are belaying the climber. Usualy the only moments one is "free" to take pictures, is while both climbers are at the belay, and of course these are not climbing pictures.

Climbing in a party of three can help, but then you have the drawback of decreased speed, which takes a lot of -longer- climbs out of reach.

But there are more issues on ice climbing photography:

The cold, a conditio sine qua non for iceclimbing, can be a problem with modern camera's, either with a lot of electronics inside, either completely digital. Low temperartures not only reduce battery life drastically, but as we noticed some winters ago with Francis' video camera, can make the whole thing malfunctioning. Keeping the camera warm inside your coat needs to be avoided, as temperature changes often result in condensed lenses and foggy pictures.

Winter lighting conditions are also not as optimal for photography/filming as you would like them. At least in the Alps most frozen waterfalls are out of the sun, like on north facing walls or in narrow gullies. So the contrast is often extremely high between the icefall in shadow and the bright snowy environment reflecting the winter sun. This is the case for both digital and classic photography.

The whole world seems to have switched to digital by now, rendering classic photo film more expensive and hard to find. In this light it is quite remarkable to see the founding of The Black & White Factory, a center for the promotion and conservation of artisanal (film) photography.

A good friend of mine (and also a climber), Geert Vanden Broeck, is involved in this center and so I was invited to the opening a couple of weeks ago. I went to have a look and took my father, who is an amateur photographer for more than forty years and although he switched to digital some time ago, was very interested. We were both very impressed by Jed Freudenthal's photographs, landscapes taken with a large format camera. His photographs show an amazing atmoshere and extreme detail in both the very light and very dark zones. Computers and Internet are too limited to reproduce his images.

It might sound crazy because it is most probably very hard to combine with climbing, but I am thinking about taking an old 6x6 camera to the mountains and expose myself to some B&W landscape photography. I still need a cover for the electricity cupboard at home, and a large photo would be nice for that. No way a digital or even 35mm film capture can provide a high enough resolution for the size I need.

A lot of climbers seem to be interested in photography, or turn into more "serious" photography next to their climbing career. Let me conclude with some friends' websites worth looking at..
- Geert Vanden Broeck
- Werner Van Steen
- Reginald Roels
- Johan -Wannes- Cré
- Werner De Wael
- Kurt Pas

Jungfrau Marathon

Just thought the Jungfrau Marathon in Grindelwald might be an interesting read. It combines my current struggle to get fit again (nowhere near ready to run a marathon) with our first climbing trip for this winter: Grindelwald. Dougald Macdonald is in the area around Grindelwald for a couple of weeks and has been writing some nice articles in his blog.

Skydiving Video

I spent the weekend (mostly sunday) skydiving back in Belgium. Did 6 jumps & had great fun. I worked a little on precision & orientation during freefall. (Trying to answer this question: "Ok, I jumped out, I'm falling, green means down, blue means up ... But where the hell is the airplane I just jumped out of ... ?"). My third jump was great. Immediately spotted the airplane, flew in the axis for a few seconds then practised tracking perpendicular to the jump run axis. I finished the weekend with my first video jump at sunset. It's cool to see yourself tracking, even if the track itself is not that great. I learned a lot from that, thanks for the vid, Sam !

In case you're wondering why I spend so much time tracking in the air it is *not* because that is an essential skill for base jumping. ;-)

On Saturday we met at Jo's place to discuss about the trip to Canada. We kinda have similar goals in mind: climb the classics. I'd like to do some really long routes & Jo'd like to get on some steep waterfalls.

It seems we got most of the gear covered, especially if I buy a new rope & an avalanche transceiver.

Clothing is another matter, at least for me. I still climb in my 15 year-old skiing trousers which have become a patchwork of crampon-inflicted holes.

The winter swimming season has started, meaning the local swimming pool is open from 6.30 to 8.00 am, making it far more convenient to combine a good swimming workout with life on the corporate treadmill. I'm planning to check out my new Polar heart rate monitor tomorrow morning. It comes with a nice online training program, Polar personal fitness.

Currently I'm doing 2km 2 times a week, I want to get that up to 6km every week. I'm not sure which heartrate zones I'm training in but I'll find out soon. I've learned that you can't just take your running heart rate zones & apply them to swimming. Apparently your heart rate is lower in water than on land.

How crashed computers influence sleep

It came gradually, but by the time I fully realized what was happening, it was to late: my PowerBook's hard disk crashed!

It started by my computer starting to have very poor performance, like swapping all the time, even when nothing was going on. But by the time I had decided to make a backup on an external USB drive, the whole thing refused to boot at all, only producing a loud whining sound that definitely didn't come from the speakers! Bad luck for me: my last backup is a couple of months old, so my summer holiday pictures are... gone.
And so are my data!

Shit happens, and wednesday night, when it happened, I was very nervous about the loss when I went to bed, not getting to sleep easily, even when I wanted to be fit thursday for a day of rock climbing. But thursday night, after a good day of climbing, and without a laptop to keep me busy, I took up reading Sean's mixed climbing book, and went to bed early.

I was afraid this would get me awake way to early, and I was prepared to get up and getting to work early, but apparently my body didn't mind the extra hours of sleep at all, so I slept nine (9) hours last night. Needless to say I feel quite fit today..

Yesterday's climbing was good! Nice weather -at last this summer!- and the nice crack of Beez. We focussed on long pitches of a moderate difficulty, as like I mentioned before, this is the main action point in my training. The fact that Beez isn't over protected, and demands some engagement from the climber, was the point my rock climbing partner needs to work on.

But I definitely love rockclimbing during week days! It's oh so quiet then, I think there were less than ten people at the whole spot, which has about 400 routes!

So... I promised reading Sean's book, and to synthesize relevant tips and information for C1sc0. Sean Isaac is really giving very clear looks on things!
I'm adding a separate page about ice climbing gear(in dutch!) on my ouiqi, as of course it's not related to Canada only.

My ouiqi is developing more and more as my personal online draft book, and I am thinking of creating some more general climbing technical pages in the future, which possibly can result in articles in the Bergpallieters' club magazine.

Talking about my ouiqi, and about crashing harddisks: maybe I should put up something to create regular backups on my little webserver too?!?!

Interview with Will Gadd

Just thought I'd quickly point out this new interview with Will Gadd. Intro from the article:

Will’s climbing accomplishments are well beyond the norm; on ice, rock using tools when it is too damn cold to use his hands, and hard multipitch. But aside from that, one of the greatest qualities about Will is that he is a climber’s climber. Climbing, at some point, sometimes gets wrapped up in ego in some form or another. The influence and reasons for climbing get blurred. Will’s answers in this interview are refreshing to read and a good reminder of why we pull.

I need to start taking action!

a brief introspective analysis of my training needs...

The bad summer we are suffering this year has been terrible for my physical workout so far, as I hate to go mountain biking or running when it rains. Even my rock climbing has been far less than usual this summer due to the doubtful wheather, and the actual fuel prices.

Let me explain that last one: since we have to drive at least an hour single way to the crags, it's just not worth it anymore to drive there and check whether the rock is dry enough to climb. So we have stayed home more sundays than we actualy went climbing. Adding to that I have enough work to do around my house, and my sports climbing partner even more at his house.

Excuses, excuses...

Lucky for me there is the Rebolting Team, which I take part in. About once a month we go cleaning and (re)bolting rock climbing routes, which involves plenty of climbing and hauling with heavy bags and stuff. As the crag we are mainly working on at the moment is pretty hard, all team members had to improve their technical climbing level.

The result of all this is that I believe the condition between my ears, and my technical climbing level, are pretty sufficient at the moment, but I definitely need to work on endurance.
As I felt last winter, my drytooling sessions in Buggenhout were usefull enough to give me technical luggage, faith and confidence in the tool points hooking on tiny edges, I surely want to pick up these workouts again!

Another point of action is checking my material.

I found out last winter in Scotland, where approaches are slightly longer than a fifteen minute walk from the car to the climb, my feet tend to start hurting in my boots. It certainly slowed me down, and even after I got home, the pain didn't finish immediately.
Do I need bigger boots? Or would custom made soles help me out?

What else needs consideration?
- Are my ropes not to old? The dry cover has certainly worn of..
- which axes will I take? My leashless Fusions or my antique leashed Quasars? For long multipitch climbs leashed climbing is still commonly considered a wise choice.
- gloves, mittens,... : as my ice climbing gloves "disappeared" from the drying room last winter -they were worn off anyway- I definitely need to new ones. But which? It might be interesting to have different pairs: thin ones for the climbing, warmer ones for the belay, and even a separated pair for the approach. And they must be "compatible" to leashed tools...

I don't feel like wanting to spend a lot of money on new material, since I still need to get done important works on the house. But on the other side decent material is quite important for safety and health.

All right!
Taking the day of thursday, to go rock climbing.
And next weekend I might go for a good walk, to test both my condition and my boots.

First snow in the Alps

Three cheers for the weather gods ! It seems the first snow has fallen in the Alps. Dear Ice saints, if last year I lost faith in you, I apologize. Now, go & make it freeze a little more !. (Update): Katie Brown has been climbing near Canmore & she is reporting about snow in August.

Started training for ice climbing

Last week I started my workout for ice climbing. During previous winters I spent most of my time trying to improve my bouldering performance and training for ice was a sideline activity at best. The bouldering and ice climbing seasons kind of collide but this winter my training focus will be on mixed & ice. I'm still in the process of setting up my training schedule, but below are some articles I've collected.

Jack Robertson (Mountain Guide & Author) has a couple of pdf sheets with training & other tips for winter climbing. Maybe I should have read the one with speed tips for alpine climbing before I set off on a certain climb a few years ago in Norway (blush).

Neil Gresham has written some nice articles about training for winter and mixed climbing. I'll probably do some of the strength training exercises he suggests once I find a cheap fitness center around here.

Training for Peak Performance by Clyde Soles seems a nice enough book about training for (alpine) climbing. Maybe I should create an online wishlist somewhere.

First thing I do whenever I pick up training after a long period of rest is establishing my resting heart rate. This allows me to guard myself from overtraining & gives me a good idea of what my body is doing. Plus, it's a fun thing to see how your heart reacts to stress in everyday life. (Bad hangover, a night of bad dreams vs. a good night's rest, etc ...) Recently, I've started using one of these blood pressure meters to make it easy. You want to measure your heart rate in the morning just after you get out of bed. On most mornings, I'm not awake enough to feel my heartbeat let alone count it. So this little device is a great help, I just leave it on my nightstand with a deck of notecards & a pen.

Another option is to get one of these fancy Polar heart rate monitors. Some of these feature a rest heart rate test mode that makes it even easier. Right now, I'm too broke for that though so a 12 euro cheapo unit will have to do.

Right now, I spend most of my training time building up some basic aerobic capacity. Mostly running & swimming (2km yesterday, yay!). I hope I get strong enough to start doing some trail running soon because there are some nice hills around here I'd like to explore. More about training later.

Climbing in Teutonia

After moving to Germany I was initially a little disappointed with the climbing potential around Bielefeld. It's kinda flat here. Nice forests but very little rock potential. Until last week I had a quick look at the Halleluja Steinbruch. It' a damp, wet, low old quarry but at least there is some real sandstone rock to climb. From the pics it seems there is even some 'winter' climbing. There's always the indoor climbing place Speicher which looks nice albeit a little claustrophobic.

Climbing Blogs, part II

I want to add something to C1sc0's writing on Climbing blogs...
Almost at the same moment he wrote his article, I was working on my personal climbing webpage (which I don't prefer to be very public yet), adding a section "People I met in the mountains". I didn't mean this to become a list of everybody I ever met, but more a list of links to webpages or blogs of people I met in person and would like to keep track of what they're up to.
I might as well share my list here...
- Dougald MacDonald, Scotland 2007
- Will Gadd, Kandersteg 2007
- Sean Isaac, Kandersteg & Scotland 2007
- Dave MacLeod, Scotland 2007
- James Edwards, Scotland 2007
- Olivier Coenen & Moniek Steenis, Belgium, know them for a long time
- Xavier Bonjean, Belgian Rebolting Team, 2007
- Johan -Wannes- Cré, De Bergpallieters, our local climbing club. Ok this is more a photo blog, but he is a climber too...
- Greet Smekens, De Bergpallieters. Also not a blog specific about climbing, but she is climbing nevertheless.
- Karin Magog, South Africa 2005
- Geert Gijsbrechts, my ice climbing partner of the first hour, also started a blog recently (inspired by ours). I hope he will start climbing more again and write about it too.
- Kurt Pas, chances are little you will ever find something about climbing here, but Kurt was my very first climbing partner many many years ago.
- Heidi (& Bart), more Bergpallieter friends with a blog. Even better: this is a real travel & climbing blog!
- James Doherty, an Australian climber & photographer, Canada 2008
- Rob and Malc, 2 British climbers we met at Musashi, Canada 2008
Oh, the order of this list is completely random...

Mmm, it looks like I almost didn't meet any bloggers before this year, lol!
I might have to check my older contacts, so more to follow, perhaps.

Ok guys, if you find your way here, don't forget to leave a comment! ;-)

First frozen waterfall of the winter

Saturday I spotted this nice 'waterfall' in Germany. Zheng Guogu is my new hero. We went to the Documenta contemporary art exhibition & for obvious reasons this piece caught my eye. Last time I came here was in 1992 for Jan Hoet's Documenta but this year's was a bit of a disappointment. We were feeling just like in New York's MoMa: a supermarket for modern art. I guess Saatchi & co are to blame for this. It's interesting to notice that this year's interesting contemporary art projects come from ex-communist Russia or China. Especially the Chinese artists have a unique way of blending their cultural heritage with modern media. This wax waterfall is an interesting take on a common motif in traditional Chinese painting. Likey.

Opening Klimax II

Yesterday I attended the official opening of Klimax II, a new part of the indoor climbing complex in Breendonk, not so far from where I live. I had the honour(?) of listening to a couple of speeches, amongst others by our Flemish sports minister Bert Anciaux, and our rather new Flemish Minister-president Kris Peeters.

Of course those speeches are not the reason you go to ceremonies like this. It's a good opportunity to meet people and learn the latest news about what's going on behind the screens. Of course this happens during the drink afterwards, but also while we were waiting for our Minister-president, who was about one hour late...
Klimax II is the first big climbing hall in Belgium that has lead climbing by default, as toproping is standard in Belgian indoor climbing. It's also not completely indoors, two sides are open, which allows a lot of spectators watching competitions, the first of which will be the World Cup within a couple of weeks.

September 8 was also the day the new Flemish climbing federation KBF (Klim- & Bergsport Federatie) should have been founded. For those not knowing: so far we had two federations here, history would take us to far if I had to explain all of this, and the main reason they didn't get together earlier, is people sticking to their position of power at both sides, blocking everything.
Also now I heard one big club is trying to block the process because they want more power in the new federation.

Why do I bother to write about this political topic?
A couple of years ago I was president of the smaller one of those two federations, and I spent a lot of energy to get to a fusion. So although I am not at all involved anymore in the actual process, I still care. And I will still be glad if one day will show all my energy spent on it, will not have been wasted.

But maybe the most interesting thing I heard yesterday is about ice climbing. I learned there is a waterfall in Belgium that freezes over regularly. I made the guy who told me promise to call me when it does next time, to go climb it with him. I hope he does!

The (Not So) Big List of Climbing Blogs

My first experience with climbing on the internet was years ago in newsgroups like rec.climbing. Climbers are notoriously slow adopters when it comes to (digital) technology, I guess most are too busy 'out there' getting away from their working life computers. That was true then and is still true today. I was kinda surprised so few climbing blogs are out there. Maybe I'm not searching hard enough (*blush*). So here's a list.

• Scotty Gross


• That's so Gneiss


• Kelly McBride


• Enlightened Chuffer


• Manu Ibarra



• The Mountain World


• Richard Carr Vertical Addict


• Ade Miller Alpine Climbing Blog


• Rock Climbing for Lilfe


• Climbing Narcissist


• Lynn Hill Blogs


• New Climber


• All Climbing Blog


• Dougald MacDonald


• Will Gadd


• Sean Isaac


• Dave MacLeod


• Olivier Coenen & Moniek Steenis


• Xavier Bonjean


• Katie Brown Rock Talk

(Update) : I'll be adding more 'real' climbing blogs as I find them. There's an interesting discussion going on about 'Pro' blogs at All Climbing. And another post about the controversy here.

The Goal & the Way to get there...

It's a widespread cliché climbers want to climb mountains (or frozen waterfalls, whatever) "because they are there".
For outsiders this most probably is a very vague and insufficient answer. Although the question is not more (or less) obvious than why people collect postage stamps, why people play football, or why people try to meet other people at places where the music is so loud you can't even hear what they're screaming in your ear. I'm giving my personal point of view here.
"Climbing" is not the goal itself, it's a way to get there. "There" is not the top of the mountain, because there you are only half way and the most difficult or scary part in many cases, the descent, still has to come. It's also no such a thing as "been there, done that". Ah well, maybe that plays along too.
In my eyes, climbing is a way of travelling, or perhaps a reason for travelling. And as many travellers say, not the destination is the goal, but the travel.
During the years I climb, I've tried to get to lots of different places to climb, not sticking to the obvious southern French sport climbing spots, or Chamonix for alpine stuff. They're excellent for climbing, and I did have great times over there, but there's more in the climbing world... like Canada.

As for the iceclimbing, living in Belgium, the Alps are not too far away, and offer plenty of good climbs. So why on Earth would one go to Norway? Or Scotland, which is not only farther away and more difficult to get to than France or Switserland, but also is well known for its rain ten days out of nine?!
Or... why Canada? Because Sean and Will told us to? Because we were so hopeless and frustrated about last warm winter with terrible -or unexisting- ice conditions at the Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival? No, yes, not only. There's always not only the ice, the rocks, the mountains, there's always the country too, and the local people you get into contact with. Briefly said: it's about the whole travel experience built around the climbing.
And for some reason the climbing stuff with all its peculiar logistic challenges, like material, routefinding, transport, more than often obliges you to go off the beaten touristic path and go to less known places. But you always have a goal, a purpose of going there..

So, is climbing the goal or the way to get there? It's both, and it's none of them!
But for sure it's more than a sport.

The least important part of preparation...

Hopefully, we're gonna write here about lots of important stuff and solved(?) problems on our way to Canada. Maybe I'll add something about the way I got to Scotland last winter too...
But as illogical as I can be, I'd like to start with what must be the least important part of the mental preparation: the composition of the right playlist for our iPods. Maybe after all not that worthless, I always considered te right soundtrack crucial to get in the right mood for whatever activity.
Now that 160 gigabyte iPods have hit the market, almost everyone can take his or her complete music collection on the road. But as I even experience with my old 30 gig iPod, that much music is hardly manageable if you don't think of dedicated playlists.

So... to hit the road with it, here's the first names for our our "Official Frozen Chicken Air Playlist" :
- Boards of Canada
- Sigur Rós

We might post more here, but we'll keep track of the playlist on the Ouiqi...

Risk & Selfishness

Nonkel V has proposed to go & do some preparation for our Canadian trip in Grindelwald, home of the Eiger from Oct 27 until Nov 4. That sounds really great & I urgently need a vacation. Mmm, Doesn't everybody urgently needs one? Trouble is, that's also the period of my girlfriend's birthday. (Incoming !)

One of the reasons I started this blog is to try to explain to non-climbing sceptics what this lifestyle is all about. I need to convince my girlfriend that climbing is not a selfish pursuit of rich white boys. Yes, I know, hard job but someone's got to do it.

Recently I took up skydiving. Even though it's not a great aerobic workout I think it helps a lot with climbing, especially in the more scary moments. I'm curious to learn more about the relationship between skydiving & climbing. Steph Davis is a skydiver, so is Leo Houlding. One thing is sure: skydiving is as addictive as climbing.

There's obviously the BASE connection. With my 11 jumps I'm nowhere near my first base jump, but the idea is intriguing. I've seen BASE described as a fast way to get down after alpine ascents but somehow I doubt about that. Weather conditions (wind, visibility) need to be perfect for BASE & even though a base rig is smaller it's still a lot of stuff to haul up. Not exactly for the unprepared.

Skydiving & base are clearly high-risk, high-adrenaline activities. Lots of people ask why I like these kinds of activities. Some point to a probable (among many) chemical deficiency in my brain. I don't experience skydiving as a high-risk activity. To me it's more about risk management, staying on top of things, training your mind to stay in control when things go bad.

Both climbing & skydiving are highly technical activities which can be practiced safely with good preparation. I'm not doing this for 'kicks'. E.g. I don't think bungee jumping is very interesting. Kicks for sure, but where is the technical difficulty? Buy the ticket, attach the big rubber band & if you're braindead enough you just jump down with a big holler. I don't like risk that cannot be mitigated by mental, technical & physical preparation.

So, two questions to answer with this blog: Why is climbing not a selfish pursuit? Why participate in high-risk activities if it's not for the 'kicks'? Many people ask me, let's try to find some good reasons in follow-up posts.

Frozen Chicken Air Ready for Take-off

Sean Isaac and Will Gadd have made us crazy ! We're going ice climbing in Canada !

After last year's disappointing winter season in the Alps we've decided to play safe & go somewhere nice & chilly for our next ice climbing trip. We've booked our flight with Frozen Chicken Air (Air Canada) to Calgary in Februari 2008. 3 weeks of snow, ice & fun. We can't wait ! My partner in crime is Jo Dotremont a.k.a. Nonkel V.

I'm planning to write a little about our preparations (gear, mind & body), maybe some previous stuff we've done on ice & whatever pops into my mind that is slightly related to ice climbing.