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!