Music again...

I risk C1sc0 saying I'm going very off topic now, but I got tagged by my collegue Philip and I won't drop this opportunity for interaction.

First, the music I let wave my brains at work is mainly my little iPod's, varied with whatever (iTunes') network scans at work reveal. I try to not to press the next button too often, but open my mind for new things. But his blog is not about work or computer things, so let's go climbing...

Whoever ever got the chance (or bad luck?) to be in my car on a (climbing) trip, will know my iPod has quite diverse sounds on it. I like playing them in full random order, which very well can result in Edvard Grieg followed by Craddle of Filth.

But most of it is situated somewhere in between, Tori Amos and Bel Canto getting a very high score, followed by Dead Can Dance and Sigur Rós. Boards of Canada also, and Leaves' Eyes, Mylène Farmer, Hedningarna, Massive Attack,... I have to stop.

Oh yes: while they were renovating our office some time ago -yes, while we were supposed to keep on working- I had to fall back on the more noisy stuff to fade out the drilling machines and such...

Let me tag my partner in climb C1sc0 first, and Wannes and Heidi...

Mountain concerns

It may seem ridiculous, but a part of the preparation to a big trip like this is preparing a play list with music to take along. I've written before about the "Official Frozen Chicken Air Playlist", and I could easily write more about it, but the question why? brought another concern to my mind...

Have you ever noticed the slight difference between a mountain club and a mountaineering club? Or in Dutch, an alpenclub and an alpinistenclub? Between alpine and alpinism, berg and bergsport?

I have...
It was the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA) who made me aware, by stating a mountain club has a much broader view than a mere mountaineering club: almost everything related to the mountains and the mountain world can belong to the interest field of a mountain club, mountaineering and other mountain sports being a (more or less important) part of it. But a mountaineering organisation by her name suggests to focus only on those sports.

Hence my concern about what's going on nowadays in the Belgian/Flemish alpine scene. Where the Belgian Alpine Club (BAC/CAB) in her name and origin was a mountain club, and evenso the VBSF originated from the Oestereichishes AlpenVerein (OeAV), they have now merged into the Climbing & Mountaineering Federation (Klim- & Bergsport Federatie, KBF), thus narrowing their focus on the pure sports thing.

Of course this merge of the two big mountain(eering?) clubs in Flanders was a dream of many -including me- and it is without doubt a good thing. The narrowing focus on the mere sport has already been an ongoing process for years nevertheless. And of course there are other organisations like Mountain Wilderness and socio-cultural associations who cover the non-sports part, but some integration went missing.

I am a bit afraid our climbers and mountaineers will get less feeling with the mountain world they visit, seeing mountains and climbing rocks as little more than a sports field, instead of the vulnerable eco-systems they are. Around New Year there was a series of shows on German television where Reinhold Messner also mentioned the fact of tourists having no feeling with the "real" mountain world.

So... returning to the (mountains of) Canada, I tried to do some research about Canadian music. Yes, reading a couple of Wikipedia-pages is considered research here ;-)

I'm not going to dig into Canadian folk, jazz or whatever specialized music scene, just thought it would be nice to have some Canadian stuff to listen to. The only ones I really knew to be Canadians, were Alanis Morissette, Joni Mitchel and Daniel Lanois, but now I can add Cowboy Junkies, Leonard Cohen, Loreena McKennitt and also Melissa Auf der Maur to that list.
And others like Brian Adams, Avril Lavigne and Shania Twain, but I'm not sure they will make it to our playlist..

Apart from the Canadians, some music does fit in a mountain environment, and other doesn't. It's a quite personal matter of taste of course, but I'd like to hear what music you associate with your mountain and/or climbing experience..

SUMMIT '08

Last weekend, the Flemish Klim- & Bergsportfederatie (Climbing & Mountaineering Federation) held its first big annual fair, called SUMMIT'08 to promote its activities in the field of mountain sports (in dutch: stagebeurs)
All trainings, educations and expeditions were introduced to the audience, people were able to subscribe also, clubs presented themselves and workshops were given.
Next to that, there was also an active part, with a mountainbike tour, an adventure circuit and at least 3 different indoor climbing walls! There was a boulder wall, a simulation of artificial climbing, and.... an iceclimbing/drytool wall.

I was asked to cooperate for that last one, so together with partners in climb Gerrit and Geert, and a bunch of workers from BVLB, we built a slightly overhanging 6.5 meter high wooden wall from scratch on saturday, created 2 routes on it with wooden "holds" saturday night, and belayed and let people try climbing with axes on sunday. Those who brought their boots or who were lucky enough to fit in one of the few pairs of boots we had with us, could also try climbing with crampons.

Plenty of people passed by to try, and of course we hadn't made the two little routes too difficult (but there was a nasty "missing" foothold in one of them - grin) so everybody with a little bit of climbing experience was able to top and ring the cow bell I had found on my parents attic.

Next to that there was of course the opportunity of seeing back a lot of people, meeting new people, and "networking" in common. I got a nice tip of where to sleep in Canada, and guess what, C1sc0 had booked a couple of nights in that very spot the day before! Speaking of coincidence...

Another part of the fair was an exhibition about the history of Belgian climbing & mountaineering. Due to the fact I was "on duty" I didn't have time to visit this exhibition extensively, but I briefly walked through. Most of it I had already seen a couple of years ago on another fair.
But it was very interesting indeed! Those of you who know a little about Belgian history, or have been climbing in the Alps, might have heard of Ernest Solvay, a Belgian industrial who sponsored the Solvay bivouak on Matterhorn, or our fromer king Albert I (grandfather of Albert II) who gave his name to the Refuge Albert Premier in France, and died in a climbing accident in Marche-les-Dames, near Namur in Belgium. Also his son king Leopold III was a good climber, well known in the Dolomites.
Don't be afraid, I'm not going to write down Belgian climbing history(link in Dutch) here! But holding the Kings Ice Axe was a strange experience indeed (it was behind glass at the exhibition, but yeah... the day before... :-) ) and to my pleasant surprise, one of my photographs -about iceclimbing- was used at the exhibition too.

If anyone's interested, I can do a next post about how we set up our iceclimbing wall, with some more pictures.

Drytool competition

For once, I will do a post in Dutch, as I just take it from the organisator's website:

Wanneer? Vrijdag 25 januari 2008 om 20u
Waar? Recreatiedomein Breeven te Bornem

Naar jaarlijkse gewoonte organiseren we ook binnenkort onze dry-tool wedstrijd.
Telkens treffen we hier talloze liefhebbers die streven naar de overwinning en vele mooie prijzen, maar ook vele nieuwsgierigen die eens van deze klimtechniek
willen proeven.

Inschrijven via info@berghut.be of 052/47.85.22
Gratis deelname

In short: fridaynight january 25, there is a drytool competition in Bornem.
If you go take a look at the website, you can see two small pictures I made last year...