En wijle weg...

Voor wie hier nieuw komt: Welkom!

Op dit webdagboek schrijven Francis (C1sc0) en Jo (Nonkel V) over hun ijsklimtrip naar Canada. Zoals je hieronder kan lezen, zijn we al enkele maanden warm aan het lopen in het Engels. Maar nu het eindelijk zo ver is - morgen zitten we op het vliegtuig van Frozen Chicken Air, ook wel Air Canada genoemd - zal ik voor een deel verslag doen in het Nederlands. We zullen ook proberen om regelmatig een foto te posten, maar alles zal natuurlijk afhangen van de internetaccomodatie ter plekke.

Voor wie helemaal nieuw is: je kan altijd antwoorden, vragen stellen of commentaar leveren door onderaan een bericht op comments te klikken. Als je niet wil dat iedereen je bericht kan lezen, mag je natuurlijk ook mail sturen.

Morgenvroeg zijn we dus weg, en om 15 uur plaatselijke tijd zouden we in Calgary voet aan de grond moeten zetten, maar dan is het in Europa alweer terug nacht. Het is ginder 8 uur vroeger dan hier. Ik geloof dat dit het grootste tijdsverschil is dat ik al gehad heb, dat belooft voor de jetlag achteraf!

De bagage pakken is ook nogal de moeite geweest! Niet alleen is er de gewichtsbeperking, die voor een internationale vlucht al bij al nogal meevalt, maar er is ook het volume. En dat blijkt uiteindelijk nog het lastigste probleem te zijn. Mijn twee duffelbags zitten stampvol!

Cyah in Canada!

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..

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.

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!

Photography & filming in the cold

Had a chat with Wannes this morning, mainly about photographic issues.

It always seems to be a problem combining serious climbing with taking decent photographs, left alone filming, especially when you are a party of two. Either you are climbing, either you are belaying the climber. Usualy the only moments one is "free" to take pictures, is while both climbers are at the belay, and of course these are not climbing pictures.

Climbing in a party of three can help, but then you have the drawback of decreased speed, which takes a lot of -longer- climbs out of reach.

But there are more issues on ice climbing photography:

The cold, a conditio sine qua non for iceclimbing, can be a problem with modern camera's, either with a lot of electronics inside, either completely digital. Low temperartures not only reduce battery life drastically, but as we noticed some winters ago with Francis' video camera, can make the whole thing malfunctioning. Keeping the camera warm inside your coat needs to be avoided, as temperature changes often result in condensed lenses and foggy pictures.

Winter lighting conditions are also not as optimal for photography/filming as you would like them. At least in the Alps most frozen waterfalls are out of the sun, like on north facing walls or in narrow gullies. So the contrast is often extremely high between the icefall in shadow and the bright snowy environment reflecting the winter sun. This is the case for both digital and classic photography.

The whole world seems to have switched to digital by now, rendering classic photo film more expensive and hard to find. In this light it is quite remarkable to see the founding of The Black & White Factory, a center for the promotion and conservation of artisanal (film) photography.

A good friend of mine (and also a climber), Geert Vanden Broeck, is involved in this center and so I was invited to the opening a couple of weeks ago. I went to have a look and took my father, who is an amateur photographer for more than forty years and although he switched to digital some time ago, was very interested. We were both very impressed by Jed Freudenthal's photographs, landscapes taken with a large format camera. His photographs show an amazing atmoshere and extreme detail in both the very light and very dark zones. Computers and Internet are too limited to reproduce his images.

It might sound crazy because it is most probably very hard to combine with climbing, but I am thinking about taking an old 6x6 camera to the mountains and expose myself to some B&W landscape photography. I still need a cover for the electricity cupboard at home, and a large photo would be nice for that. No way a digital or even 35mm film capture can provide a high enough resolution for the size I need.

A lot of climbers seem to be interested in photography, or turn into more "serious" photography next to their climbing career. Let me conclude with some friends' websites worth looking at..
- Geert Vanden Broeck
- Werner Van Steen
- Reginald Roels
- Johan -Wannes- Cré
- Werner De Wael
- Kurt Pas

How crashed computers influence sleep

It came gradually, but by the time I fully realized what was happening, it was to late: my PowerBook's hard disk crashed!

It started by my computer starting to have very poor performance, like swapping all the time, even when nothing was going on. But by the time I had decided to make a backup on an external USB drive, the whole thing refused to boot at all, only producing a loud whining sound that definitely didn't come from the speakers! Bad luck for me: my last backup is a couple of months old, so my summer holiday pictures are... gone.
And so are my data!

Shit happens, and wednesday night, when it happened, I was very nervous about the loss when I went to bed, not getting to sleep easily, even when I wanted to be fit thursday for a day of rock climbing. But thursday night, after a good day of climbing, and without a laptop to keep me busy, I took up reading Sean's mixed climbing book, and went to bed early.

I was afraid this would get me awake way to early, and I was prepared to get up and getting to work early, but apparently my body didn't mind the extra hours of sleep at all, so I slept nine (9) hours last night. Needless to say I feel quite fit today..

Yesterday's climbing was good! Nice weather -at last this summer!- and the nice crack of Beez. We focussed on long pitches of a moderate difficulty, as like I mentioned before, this is the main action point in my training. The fact that Beez isn't over protected, and demands some engagement from the climber, was the point my rock climbing partner needs to work on.

But I definitely love rockclimbing during week days! It's oh so quiet then, I think there were less than ten people at the whole spot, which has about 400 routes!

So... I promised reading Sean's book, and to synthesize relevant tips and information for C1sc0. Sean Isaac is really giving very clear looks on things!
I'm adding a separate page about ice climbing gear(in dutch!) on my ouiqi, as of course it's not related to Canada only.

My ouiqi is developing more and more as my personal online draft book, and I am thinking of creating some more general climbing technical pages in the future, which possibly can result in articles in the Bergpallieters' club magazine.

Talking about my ouiqi, and about crashing harddisks: maybe I should put up something to create regular backups on my little webserver too?!?!

I need to start taking action!

a brief introspective analysis of my training needs...

The bad summer we are suffering this year has been terrible for my physical workout so far, as I hate to go mountain biking or running when it rains. Even my rock climbing has been far less than usual this summer due to the doubtful wheather, and the actual fuel prices.

Let me explain that last one: since we have to drive at least an hour single way to the crags, it's just not worth it anymore to drive there and check whether the rock is dry enough to climb. So we have stayed home more sundays than we actualy went climbing. Adding to that I have enough work to do around my house, and my sports climbing partner even more at his house.

Excuses, excuses...

Lucky for me there is the Rebolting Team, which I take part in. About once a month we go cleaning and (re)bolting rock climbing routes, which involves plenty of climbing and hauling with heavy bags and stuff. As the crag we are mainly working on at the moment is pretty hard, all team members had to improve their technical climbing level.

The result of all this is that I believe the condition between my ears, and my technical climbing level, are pretty sufficient at the moment, but I definitely need to work on endurance.
As I felt last winter, my drytooling sessions in Buggenhout were usefull enough to give me technical luggage, faith and confidence in the tool points hooking on tiny edges, I surely want to pick up these workouts again!

Another point of action is checking my material.

I found out last winter in Scotland, where approaches are slightly longer than a fifteen minute walk from the car to the climb, my feet tend to start hurting in my boots. It certainly slowed me down, and even after I got home, the pain didn't finish immediately.
Do I need bigger boots? Or would custom made soles help me out?

What else needs consideration?
- Are my ropes not to old? The dry cover has certainly worn of..
- which axes will I take? My leashless Fusions or my antique leashed Quasars? For long multipitch climbs leashed climbing is still commonly considered a wise choice.
- gloves, mittens,... : as my ice climbing gloves "disappeared" from the drying room last winter -they were worn off anyway- I definitely need to new ones. But which? It might be interesting to have different pairs: thin ones for the climbing, warmer ones for the belay, and even a separated pair for the approach. And they must be "compatible" to leashed tools...

I don't feel like wanting to spend a lot of money on new material, since I still need to get done important works on the house. But on the other side decent material is quite important for safety and health.

All right!
Taking the day of thursday, to go rock climbing.
And next weekend I might go for a good walk, to test both my condition and my boots.

The least important part of preparation...

Hopefully, we're gonna write here about lots of important stuff and solved(?) problems on our way to Canada. Maybe I'll add something about the way I got to Scotland last winter too...
But as illogical as I can be, I'd like to start with what must be the least important part of the mental preparation: the composition of the right playlist for our iPods. Maybe after all not that worthless, I always considered te right soundtrack crucial to get in the right mood for whatever activity.
Now that 160 gigabyte iPods have hit the market, almost everyone can take his or her complete music collection on the road. But as I even experience with my old 30 gig iPod, that much music is hardly manageable if you don't think of dedicated playlists.

So... to hit the road with it, here's the first names for our our "Official Frozen Chicken Air Playlist" :
- Boards of Canada
- Sigur Rós

We might post more here, but we'll keep track of the playlist on the Ouiqi...