Wintertime...

This weekend we left daylight saving time, which I think is a pity, since I could use that extra hour of light in the evening all year long! Now I will arrive home from work when it's already - or nearly - dark, it will be less practical for for feeding the animals or other chores around the house, or going climbing or biking..

So Geert and I decided to wait at least one more day to switch time, and leave early for a rock climbing sunday. No Dave today, but a day of (slab) climbing at the Rochers de Paradoux in Yvoir.

We arrived early, and it was really no surprise nobody else was there to climb. What did surprise us, was that we stayed alone like that until somewhere in the afternoon! While it really was a nice day to be out and climbing. Are less people climbing nowadays? Has the poor summer caused them giving up on climbing outdoors and do they stick to indoor climbing halls? Did they all move to Germany? Are they afraid of the cold? Are they all on holiday?

To be honest: we didn't care, but enjoyed the climbing. Even though I realized I forgot my climbing shoes when it was way to late to turn back to get them, so I had to climb on my Five.Ten Mountain Masters approach shoes...
I did some scrambling and climbing on those shoes before, so we didn't care, just kept to fifth grade routes.

Climbing at Paradoux is totally different from what you get in Dave: absolutely no need for any mobile pro whatsoever! Even when they put in the guidebook a route's protection is "demanding some commitment" there's still plenty of bombproof bolts in it.
Make sure to take loads of quickdraws when you go there!

So, mental lead climbing training was absent, concentration on using footholds was omnipresent, and once again we did discover some less known little pearls of climbing routes. Perhaps it's not a coincidence, but those little pearls I'm talking about, were all opened in the seventies by the late Claudio Barbier, and are atypical for the crag, which has mainly slab climbing. And no, I'm not going to spoil it by telling which routes I'm talking about! q-:

International Climbing Meet in South Africa

The MCSA is holding a climbing meet again! (-:

Excerpt form the mail I got:
INTERNATIONAL CLIMBING MEET
With The Mountain Club of South Africa

The Mountain Club of South Africa intends to hold an international climbing meet at the Magaliesberg, a mountain range an hour's drive away from Johannesburg, from Saturday 15.3.2008 to Monday 24.3.2008 and herewith invites climbers from your country to join.

I have been there myself at their both previous meets, and it was great!!! Especially my 2005 trip still holds high in my top 10 of climbing trips! So I can only recommend this Meet to anyone who ever dreamed to go rock climbing in Africa..

Unfortunately I won't be able to go to the meet myself this time, since I'll spend most of my 2008 holidays iceclimbing in Canada, and I don't really have the budget for two intercontinental flight holidays a year - not to mention environmental concerns one might get from that much flying.

Anyone interested in going, let me know and I'll forward you the invitation mail with subscription forms. The meet is open to all climbers...

And make sure to greet Ulrike & co from me if you go!

Trad Climbing in Dave

Yesterday was time for another day of classic Belgian rock climbing at the Rocher de Nevieau near Dave, I wrote about this spot before.

We anticipated to the "bad bolts drawback" by taking some nuts and camalots and went for some -ehrm- less frequented routes. One of them was even mentioned in the guidebook being "in bad shape nowadays", and the most recent guidebook for this crag is almost 20 years old!

Needless to say most of it was totally overgrown, and we made good use of our rack: we only found two our three old rusted pitons in the whole route!

But it definitely was a nice adventure climb. The name of the route is also quite appropriate "L'Inconnue" (the Unknown). Even Eddy did not know it!

It's a shame most climbers only climb first pitches in Dave, while a lot of routes have two or even three pitches that are very beautifull also. Those are also completely not polished - which is a relevant and valuable characteristic for Belgian rock climbing routes!

But the premise all Belgian rock climbing is sports climbing holds less and less; there definitely is trad climbing in Belgium, and I hope it will be preserved!

Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival

Despite the lack of ice last winter, the annual Ice Climbing Festival at Kandersteg will be held again, from January 4 - 6th!

It was at last years Festival we talked to Will Gadd and Sean Isaac basically triggered us into visiting their iceclimbing country...

Work ahead!

Finally there seems to be some time available to extend the Bergppallieters climbing infrastructure in Buggenhout!

After an idea of Jan Vanhees and Manu Ibarra, we plan to mount some wooden structures on our existing stone and concrete climbing tower to create a mixed climbing facility, the -pine- wood simulating the ice, and the wall simulating the rock.

I'm eagerly looking forward to this, as it will be a perfect training facility close to home. Did I mention the concrete stone climbing wall is excellent for drytooling already? No need to explain I volunteered for the construction team.

I hope we can get it up quite soon, so I can use it for training before we leave for the Rockies :-)

But there's also other work that keeps me a bit from training nowadays. Past weekend I have been preparing my grassland for winter, and this will still take me some more hours to complete. This kind of work on the land is a workout too, but it rendered my climbing sunday afternoon rather worthless due to fatigue.

Let's hope for some more nice climbing weather next weekend...

What kind of climber is c1sc0

I started climbing in 1989 after watching Patrick Edlinger's movies like La vie au bout des doigts & Opera Vertical. In reality, it was my neighbour who introduced me to bouldering on a one-week trip to Fontainebleau, France. Yes, my first climbing experience was bouldering & though I spent a lot of time sport & ice climbing I always came back to the source of it all: pure movement as can only be experienced in the most concentrated form of climbing: bouldering.

The area was Trois Pignons, the time was a mid-August summer week in 1990 and the sun was burning. I was a bumbling newbie greasing off slippery sandstone rock following an older & much stronger climber. I managed to scare the wits out of myself on high stuff, I found out first-hand that some jugs are beloved by wasps to build their nests & my hard Asolo rock shoes were absolutely not suited for bouldering. But I loved it. The smell of rosin blending with the sweet scent of the pine forest around us. The grace of the boulders' shapes. The screams of encouragement as we were giving everything. The untold rule of not talking about grades. Bouldering was instant climbing & concentrated fun. We had one of these small portable yellow 'sports' radios blaring The Pixies. This monkey sure was in heaven.

Although my first climbing partner'd stop climbing actively a few years later I continued into the shameful world of Lycra tights, bandanas, long hair & heavy climbing shoes. At about the same time an indoor climbing hall opened in my hometown. The first few years I spent a lot of time climing on limestone sport crags in Belgium & the south of France.

One of the reasons I continued climbing at 16 was because of skateboarding-related shoulder injuries. I kept dislocating my shoulders & my doctors gave me a brilliant excuse to climb more: "You're too skinny, son, you need to develop some shoulder muscle". So I did. Skinny boy gone. Girls flocking around muscle boy (in mydreams) ... One problem: my shoulders kept dislocating, now with the added inconvenience of not being able to pop them back in myself due to the bulging convulsing muscle mass surrounding the shoulder. This even happened at night while I was asleep. After a while each pop included a free ride to hospital where they'd hold me down with 3 guys and ask the toughest staff member to 'manipulate' my shoulder back into place. Ouch. But I'm gratful to these 100kg+ mammoths that have helped me so many times. I got surgery on my right shoulder at the age of 18 and on the left one 10 years later. Everything's fine now but I still wake up at night in agony thinking I've dislocated my shoulder once again.

In between the injuries I got in a lot of climbing time & managed to become quite proficient at freeclimbing but by the mid-nineties something was missing. I'd done some 'hard' climbs, spent a year climbing lots of solo stuff close to Namur & seen some really nice crags in Europe. I was also increasingly getting frustrated with the climbing scene. I've always been kind of a solitary guy. The beauty of the solitary climbing experience is what attracted me to climbing in the first place.

At the time Fontainebleau was respected as a climbing place but was treated more or less as a stopover on the way to the south of France. It was certainly not a weekend destination because of the 4 hour drive. I think a contributing factor to its relative inpopularity was the steepness of its grading system. That stuff was hard. Why spend so much energy on a few moves when you could go & do an 'easy' 8 in the south of France? So Fontainebleau was a place you'd spend a few days maximum. Remember, sportclimbing was the cool thing to do back then & people'd rather spend time on real crags than on 'merely' boulders. But I still remember the great week I spent there in 1990 and in my last year of high school we had spent two weeks bumming on the Cuvier campground. Great memories. So it was time to go back.

Weekend after weekend after weekend. In the beginning I'd often drive alone down there if I didn't find anyone to join me. In fact I enjoyed exporing those forests on my own so much that I secretly wished nobody'd come next weekend. Just me, a little mat to clean my feet & a pair of climbing shoes. I learned the good time for bouldering is winter. I learned that even in the worst weather you can always get in a little climbing. I climbed in rain. I climbed in snow. I climbed in Cuvier on the threshold from 1999 to 2000. I spent a lot of time exploring new corners of the forest, finding new places to sleep at night, just enjoying this magic environment. I spent the best years of my life in this forest to become a solitary 'hardcore' boulderer.

Then once more, things changed. At the turn of the 21st century bouldering became insanely popular & now hordes of boulderers trek to Fontainebleau from all over Europe every weekend. And that's ok. Even though I've seen the climbing world change a lot in these last fifteen years on thing struck me recently: all of these fads (sport, bouldering, ice, trad) are of no consequence. If you plan things carefully you can still find your solitude in climbing. Just don't go to Trois Pignons on an Easter weekend.

Partly due to my recurring injuries I started looking at a climbing art that is a little less explosive and stressful on the body. Right now my thing is ice climbing even though a few years ago I considered it too crazy and too cold for my tastes. Sure, it's about endurance and strength but at least I know it's easier on my shoulders. And there's no competition in ice. Climbs of all grades are cool. & part of the fun is roaming around the mountain environment just like part of the fun in Fontainebleau was being in the forest.

So, what kind of a climber am I? The answer to this question is always in flux. I'd love to do some hard bouldering again without getting injured. I'd love to explore the mountains on ski a little more, maybe participate in the Derby de la Meije again. I for sure will spend a great deal of time in the mountains this winter. Maybe I'll even do some sport stuff. But right now I'm stuck in this hellhole in Germany preparing for skydiving and base.

Worldcup Puurs

This weekend the IFSC sports climbing competition circus landed in Belgium, more precisely in my neighborhood, Puurs. Given this and the weather not really inviting for an outdoor climbing or hiking trip, this was a nice alternative.

I have written before about the place the event was hold, where I also noticed my former role as president of one the now joining climbing federations in Flanders. I guess it is this past that gave me a VIP badge, which was not only interesting for access to food, drinks and a seat with a nice view, but mostly for being able to talk to "other climbing VIP's" while watching the competition.

The climbing was breathtaking to watch, especially the lead (or difficulty) climbing. I may be quite biassed by being a climber myself, but in my opinion sports climbing is one of the more spectacular and aesthetical sports to watch, and in that point of view very underestimated.
From a spectator's point of view, I think you could compare lead climbing most to figure-skating or gymnastics, although it is easier to follow and more suspense because the one reaching the highest hold wins, instead of a jury giving points.

But if you're more into quick action, go watch the speedclimbing! While it still isn't very popular and widespread in western Europe -it's almost completely dominated by Russia- the exploding power for sure is comparable to athletic's 100m sprint, and because of the daring -jeté- jumps, at least as spectacular.

Of course none of them doesn't beat iceclimbing & drytooling though... but I guess that's just my opinion.

(and it will take more than a while before that circus ever comes to Belgium...)