Back in the saddle

The classic (ph. Pete Collins)

Kandersteg is one of those clean cut Swiss Alpine villages, sheltered in a valley between steep mountains large wooden chalets and a handful of expensive looking hotels spread out along the narrow road.  Nordic skiing is big business with miles of pisted track for weekday pensioners keeping fit and weekend races.  There is a long tradition of tourism and travel at least partly due to a hundred year old railway tunnel connecting the Northern towns to the ski resorts South of the mountains.  The fondue and chocolate producing cows have their winter chalet near the village centre and children are transported by their parents using sleds rather than buggies.  But beneath this precise Swiss exterior a dark secret is brooding (well it’s not really dark or a secret but…..) by some quirk of fate one of the highest concentrations of ice and mixed routes in the Alps is found dripping from the cliffs overlooking the family toboggan run.  Getting to Kandersterg from London takes the same time as driving to Fort William even if a Sea France sailing is required.  The route that avoids the French toll roads goes via Luxembourg where a full tank of fuel should be brought to make the most of the low tax rate.  Reliable ice is found for 2 – 3 months most years (even if the ice is a bit lean this season) and liberally scattered within two hours walk are steep overhangs that grow hanging daggers of ice for intense mixed routes in the M8 – 10 grade range, most of the pure ice routes really get going at about WI5 but guides and groups still find enough to do at places like Kiental and Stock.  I have been ice and mixed climbing in Kandersteg for 5 years and still only just scratched the surface (we even did a new route last week).

Ramon on Rise and Shine *** mixed line 20min from the centre of K'steg

Ramon and I have been in Kandersteg for about a week now and somehow don’t have a long list of routes ticked as only only one of our two man climbing team is anywhere near the required standard, as Ramon only narrowly avoided on-sighting ALL of the pitches of the brilliant Rise and Shine M7/7+ he must be climbing well.  We have been out most days and tried lots of routes but as often happens with routes near the limit some loose their appeal after the on-sight is blown and others were found to be out of condition after closer inspection.  A couple of days are easily spent working on the line of a new route but the main reason the slow start to this trip is mainly I’m not hungry enough to take the sharp end of the rope.  I’m not sure exactly why leading feels tricky for me now but I’m putting it down to several factors: a) a fall b) lack of training because of a) and c) ‘Mirrors of the Unseen’ an awesome book about travel in Iran.  After reading about the history of an ancient civilisation (in a hot country) faffing about halfway up a frozen cliff really seems a bit pointless!  I did recently repeat an M9 I had done years ago (without spurs this time!) so that was a step in the right direction.

Ramon on the alternate top pitch of Reise N Reich

Ramon on P1 of Training.  Rope soloing this later was a learning experience.

Why climb?
It seems that ticking well know routes or getting photos doesn’t motivate me, if I’m not enjoying climbing well I don’t have a reason to climb……… what does really motivate me for climbing though is to retrieve a pair of axes some knob end left half way up the Breitwangflu, some string tied Grigri roped soloing soon solved that slight hitch (good news Danny!)

"Rob, don't forget your axes"

Why walk?
The relatively mild winter has meant that a lot of the approach walks (2 hrs to Breitwangflu, 2 hrs to Uschinen, 1 hr to Gasterntal) can be significantly reduced with careful use of good tyres, throttle and momentum.  Driving two tonnes of 4x4 that can take on a mind of it’s own when friction fails (why does it always depend on friction?) has taken some getting used to and maybe some more practice in the UK could be useful.  Snow chains on all corners would also be nice but none of the Swiss climbers seem to use chains and I was startled to find a Skoda parked half way up a mountain until I saw it’s Synchro badge and heavily treaded tyres.  I guess if I lived in a country where Snow can last for a third of the year then I’d be better at driving in it.


Why no British?
Considering the amount of good winter climbing here I can’t understand why there are so few climbers from the UK here, although I have met some keen parties in the last week, mainly the dedicated father and son team who deserve full credit for camping in their tent and van throughout the winter.  Not only that, they have been climbing the local test pieces and adding some new routes of their own.

Ramon on the new route.

I spied the cracks from the toboggan track and Ramon

tried the direct start (r of rope) but it is poorly protected.

The LH groove (out of shot) lead me to the crack just

below Ramon. Where I lowered off, tired and out of cams.

Using the in-situ gear Ramon got past my high point

then lead the crux of the route. P2 - interesting mixed

by me.  P3 - good looking ice by Ramon.

As it was getting dark I didn't 2nd P3.

A good route. Just about acceptable style!!

Technically easy climbing - no bolts, unusual for K'steg

Ramon on P3

Provisionally named new route, inspired by the

nautical wood panelling of the basement apartment.

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Saas Fee 2011

A great competition as always!


I decided a few months ago not to splash out on the earlier rounds of the UIAA Ice Climbing World Cup (luckily as it turns out - a broken ankle would have made it impossible to compete) I almost didn't even climb at Saas Fee.  I'm so glad I came to the comp though, competing gives a slightly different buzz from onsight trad or bouldering but just as much fun in its own way.  Sadly though my performance level had been decided months ago by a summer of mainly trad slab climbing followed by UK mixed which does not give a good build up for the powerful 6 minute sprint of a competition - that was before a month of demotivating sitting around with a damaged ankle.  I climbed ok but no where near what I'm capable of and will probably finish about 40th out of 70 (I usually place around 20th)  Next year, is the annually repeated mantra.  The feeling of having not enough strength to do the moves of the qualifying route highlighted to me how much training I had been doing previously, not a structured training routine, more like regularly getting out on steep ground with axes and trying hard.

It was cool to hear from the other competitors how well respected the Ice Climbing World Cup is around the world - there were 400 individual competitors last year and the total prize purse for this years Korean round was over 30,000 Euros.


Maybe next year?







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Starting another hobby

Looking back to last spring.

Day Tripper, Lands End, BMC International Meet

Today I picked up my axes for the first time since I broke my ankle and went for a fitness test on the chalk.  FAIL.
My ankle has been improving steadily but the pace of improvement has slowed recently and I was starting to get a bit more bored and unmotivated.  An x-ray two weeks after the break showed that the bone was healing well but the fracture was still clearly visible and some foot movements make me jump.  Also on my mind is knowing that an x-ray doesn't even show anything that might have happened to tendons, ligaments or cartilage.

Thinking about the powerful style of world cup competition climbing leaves me knowing how badly prepared I am!!  Blasting up the steep routes for 6 minutes requires strength and power, even before the weeks of break induced eating and drinking my training had been long walk-ins and hanging on for days placing wires in icy cracks rather than one armers.  Oh well, I've got the memory of the highest UK finish (10th) in the world cup since the early days of the competition, with some support there is no reason why another UK athlete could not challenge for a good finish. I'm not totally giving up as there is another couple of weeks before the World Cup starts for me so hopefully I will be able to at least climb to my current potential and maybe part of the competition will be placing a cam behind an icy flake or driving a warthog in to a blob of frozen turf.

At least I can walk sort of normally on a level surface now and even kick gently with a mono point so that's progress but any ankle twisting makes me flinch.  I have been doing some stretching but the best physio was walking uphill from the pub with an alcohol anaesthetic.  Today though, trying to actually climb on chalk was like learning a new sport.

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going nowhere fast

Sofa surfing and eating has been keeping me amused (just).

The highlight of my Christmas has been a book randomly picked from a pile of paperbacks in a club hut.
An Unexpected Light: Jason Elliot.


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Arrived at nowhere

Simon heading towards the slab I landed on later,
ripping out what I thought to be a bomber hex, hitting
the slab and flipping upside down en route to landing
on the belay.  At least I held my axes and got down safely.

Jumping out of bed on Sunday for an early start didn't happen.  I did meet Simon on time but was about the last thing that worked out right.

Some things were avoidable: the forgotten head torch, the second attempt at driving up any icy slope, the hex placed sideways.

Other decisions might not have been necessary in different circumstances: should we carry on in the dark?

Whatever decisions that were made during the day all built up to me falling off the last, crux pitch of the route.  Maybe it was just bad luck?  or good luck to get away with just a little chip off my ankle?

or maybe sometimes a few risks have to be taken to get to the top?

As the pub was closed I went to hospital. Then probably the most memorable risk I took on Sunday (3 am Monday actually) was balancing on one leg and a crutch on top of the wall trying to chip the key out of the ice using a fusion by the light of my head torch to get indoors to get some sleep.

A great pitch and all for nothing! (photo Simon Frost)

Road to nowhere

Right from the word go shit was happening.

I only had two things to do on Saturday and somehow snow managed to turn them in to drawn out ordeals. It is fair to say that there was an unusually large amount of snow sitting on my Land Rover roof when I decided to leave, earlier than planned, for the 10 minute drive to Uxbridge. I had washed my down sleeping bag the previous evening and now it needed some time in a laundrette tumble dryer. As I crossed a bridge over the M25 I tried to see how the traffic was flowing, maybe the alarm bells should have started ringing when I couldn’t even see the M25 but it was only midday and there was no rush to get to Wales. A little further along the road, covered with a foot of snow by now, then….. “what’s this, a traffic jam?” then I remembered, the humped back bridge over the Grand Union Canal! On the road leading up to the bridge twenty drivers were patiently waiting in a queue to drive up towards the bridge, wheel spin for a few minutes then turn around. The look on peoples faces when their normally well behaved autos turned in to unwieldy toboggans was interesting. Engaging the diff. lock on my Land Rover I got sweet revenge on all those car drivers who wouldn’t let me out of the slow lane on the motorway. But this level of smugness is bad karma as I found out later.

Now, with a dry sleeping bag and no snow falling I tried to leave Uxbridge and get on the M40, this was not as easy as I hoped when I was quickly stopped by more traffic. I soon worked out that there is only one route West out of Uxbridge without a hill and everyone was now heading for it. Change of plan. When I got to the steepest longest hill out of town people were still trying their luck in the slush, and failing, then amazingly one guy got out and started putting chains on (he was driving a rear wheel drive Beemer so wasn’t out of the woods yet). Any cars with low ground clearance or rear wheel drive were worse off and I saw several Porsches going nowhere fast. Once on the M40 the action really hotted up………….

Carnage everywhere. I glimpsed the M25 as I crossed it again and realised it was going to be a loooong journey as I saw lorries skidded at all angles across the carriageway. Cruising north in the snowy 4x4 only lane things didn’t seem so bad until inevitably all lanes ground to a halt and everyone queued to pass uncontrollable lorries and abandoned sports cars. The worst of the snow was South of Warwick and further North things got a little easier. Fair enough, the UK is not used to snow but I still couldn’t believe how few people had snow chains and I don’t know what the snow ploughs on the motorway were up to, I saw a few gently redistributing the snow, one was even ploughing it off the fast lane and launching across the central reservation on to the other fast lane! The rest of the journey went pretty smoothly apart from walls of dense fog reducing visibility to 10m around the Nesscliffe area, good fun when the white lines are covered by snow. I arrived in Llanberis before midnight, just.

What just happened to me????

It always seems to shock me going to l'Usine.  Every route I look at requires that I turn around to see the lower off, never a good omen.

See the end of this post for a slideshow

Jeff Mercier

Pavel Dobrinskiy

Jehan-roland Guillot

Benjamin Bucci

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A rare view from a top out

Tuesday

Pete on his and Miles' route Travesty Direct (IX 9)

Wednesday
Not too sure why I’m writing this, I suppose it might jog my memory one day.  Here it is anyway……….

Somehow the early start didn't materialise and it probably wasn't far from mid day when Matt and I walked up to try the line I had seen on Tue - Cracking Up IX 9 on Clogwyn Du.  I had made a load of assumptions about the route most of which turned out to be wrong, I’ll put that down to a lack of experience of mixed climbing on gear.  Expecting either a quick success or failure in good style I was disappointed to find myself wanting to do a lot of down climbing to recoup arms and head (sculpting ice runners is time consuming).  This was ok but I had hoped to be a bit more decisive, when I eventually neared the point of no return where the route moves right below the roof it was decision time.  Lack of time and appropriate gear were all the excuses I needed.  [Down climbed from roof cleaning all gear]

Next time I’ll commit to the moves and see what happens (if it’s still in condition)




Thursday
Climbing with Simon (a link to his blog on my previous post)

Simon finding a line.  Chris Parkin has previously been to

the ledge on Simons right.

Beta.
Small pieces of information that are used to gain knowledge about a route to make it easier.
Even just knowing the (approximate) grade helps.  At least a grade indicates the climbing above is possible.
None of this information is available when trying a new route from the ground.

So when Simon suggested trying a new winter line I was keen to give it a go and I wasn’t disappointed!!  A bit gutted that circumstances didn’t give us a route we could finish this attempt but wobbling up blobs of turf frozen to compact rock with poor tied off warthogs for protection was surprisingly good fun.  I think this is my first real new route attempt although quite a lot of winter lines I have been on have a large element of uncertainty attached to them so it wasn’t a completely new experience.

Bring it on....  (obviously enthusiastic when I was writing this!!)

Simon about level with the peckers wedged behind what

looked like a loose block frozen in to the corner.

More climbing above, but how hard?

All of this lot above was written at the time, now I'll finish off the diary.
Italics added Dec 2012



Friday
rest day



Saturday
Got a better start but still worried that someone had beaten me to the route, it was ok though, the team that was ahead only wanted to throw themselves off Travesty!!  But someone had been on my preferred route as there were a couple of wires visible at the pedestal after the roof.  I put in gear to the start of roof crack.  Back down for a rest.

Went for it and was pretty happy to step on to the ledge and clip the others gear.  Went for it again and got in to pod.  Now the wheels started to fall off, as I tried to get out of the pod I used a small rimed dish up and left that gained some height but did not allow me to get any decent placements in the crack above the pod.  So I gave up! and lowered off a hex removing all of the gear apart from a wire near the ledge.



Sunday
Tired just walking up the hill then made a half hearted attempt at Travesty Direct, it was good climbing but not for what should have been a rest day.  Somehow which ever direction I looked, up or down, dislodged rime ended up in my eyes............... hmmmmmmm ............... bouldering in Font.................



Monday
Rest day



Tuesday
Last throw of the dice as had to leave Wales that eve.  Simon agreed to me taking another look and a good start got us to the crag early.  Having been on the route previously made climbing up to the ledge not too bad and I soloed up the ice to where the roof began then placed gear, getting in to the pod again was a different ball game but eventually I was relaxing in to that comfortable niche.

Unfortunately a Mountain Equipment photo of the route had been discovered in a magazine on saturday evening and the memory of this combined with poor holds in the crack above sent me searching for invisible holds out left above the pod.  From the belay Simon shouted up and assured me that the line followed the crack direct so (after some swearing) using a small edge uncovered near the dish I could reach back up and right to get a good torque and some blindly placed gear in the crack.  Bunching my feet below me then turning the torque to an strenuous undercut I reached up and hooked something covered by rime on the blunt arete left of the crack, committed I moved up and left until I could drop a large wire in to some shattered flakes further left.  Following the rib now, I clipped a jammed number 6 wire and mantled on to a good ledge.  Top quality entertainment on a very good route.

Me climbing (photo Simon Frost)

In Condition? Plenty of ice in the crack and well rimed from above but below the roof it could be whiter (see photo of Pete on Travesty Direct from earlier in the week)

Thanks Matt, Simon, Pete and Miles


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