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!

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.

Late fall & early winter in Switzerland, part 1

I'm sorry to see this blog seems to fall asleep, we're back from a week of hiking and (little) climbing in Switzerland for two weeks and still no tale or picture about it!

So...
Something like 10 years ago, it was kind of a tradition among some parts of the Belgian Alpine Club to go to Grindelwald somewhere in early november, to do some hiking and/or climbing. I believe it's mainly weather conditions that time of the year that made this habbit fade away: too much fresh snow already, or otherwise bad weather, made the "real" climbing not a good idea, and most people don't like a seven hours drive to do "some walking".

But we did have a lot of fun those days, and it might be us getting older, but Geert and I got the idea of returning to Grindelwald, to have some kind of a reunion with the friends who also where there before, and remember the old days. That was the original plan.
But as it turned out, we were the only ones supporting this idea. Modern times with overfilled agenda's, lack of holidays and changed interests played their role... and at the end even Geert was prevented to participate due to a new job!

Lucky for me, C1sc0, who wasn't there in the old days, joined in, and with some preparation for Canada in mind, the two of us spent an intense week of mainly hiking and some climbing in the Berner Oberland.

Story to be continued..