General repetition

So we ended this year's climbing where we started it: in our favourite of the Alps' ice climbing eldorado's: Kandersteg. As Francis said, temperatures were better -colder- than in january, and there even was ice, although not as plenty of it as we would have desired. But it's still early season, everything's gonna be alright!

As the title suggest, our small trip can be considered a repetition for the big trip in february. We were able to check where we stand regarding physical and mental condition, climbing techniques, team spirit, material and whatever.

Making my own count, I was pretty surprised with my physical condition, and my climbing was almost as it should be. Mentally I am not completely satisfied with myself, I was feeling a little unsure and a bit reluctant leading long steep pitches.
Talking in my favour, the ice on the less steep parts of those routes was in very unsafe shape: a thick layer of soft loose snow beneath a very thin layer of ice! Hardly possible to find a reliable spot for a belay.

It might as well have been a healthy sense for safety that kept us from those higher pitches...

But we climbed, and enjoyed! I guess you want to see some pictures now? Well... there's another point we need to give attention: the lazy automatic lighting programmes on photocamera's don't deal with snow and ice very well! It's very easy to fix it using manual lighting and knowing what needs to be done, but you have to do it! So it's due to my own laziness I have very few photo's I can show without an extended postprocessing session I don't have time for right now. We will have to do better in Canada!

Objects of Desire

In January 2007 we were in Kandersteg for the ice climbing festival but unfortunately there was almost no climbable ice. We went up to Oeschinensee to explore the area a bit & there we encountered this magnificent ice-fall called `Januarloch`. Three pitches of great looking ice ending in a weird kind of hole in a roof. As you can see in the pic the bottom of the ice was not formed at all. Tomorrow we will go up there again and we hop to find better ice. Hey, at least it is freezing this year & not +8 deg C.

Late fall & early winter in Switzerland, pictures

The first images (decoloured) are from november 1998. I added them to show the difference in snow cover back then and now.

Mud & rain

Last weekend was the 5th edition of De Kuitenbijter (Calf Biter), a yearly recurring event organized by De Bergpallieters, providing a unique combination of all weather hiking, team spirit and orientation.

This years edition was quite... muddy and a bit wet, but as always the weather could not stop us. The slippery mud may have slowed us down a bit though, or at least made us feel our calfs a little more than usual.

Most participants agreed that the orientation part was not a big challenge this year, and prefer more technical (orientation) difficulties above more distance..

I believe I am the only one having completed the trial all five times, making it a bit of a habit to me now, more than a challenge. To avoid the routine of it in the future, I decided not to participate anymore next year, but volunteered for the organisation committee instead. Let's see how we can push the needed orientation skills to a higher level!