Let's hit the rock - first attempts on the Chief

The last couple of days we tried some routes on the Chief, but so far we didn't manage to top out anything. Sunday, the first day after we arrived, Red wanted to touch some rock, no matter where or what route it was, everything was fine for him. I was still a zombie, but in the end he convinced me to come along with him. As expected we fucked up a bit, the start of the route called Tantalus Wall consisted of some bushy mossy climbing. It really freaked Red out. When we arrived at the 3th pitch, we had to come down, a huge 20m offwidth laid ahead of us and we didn't brought the gear with us to attack this monster. Yesterday we retried it, climbing smoothly up to the 3th pitch which Red was going to do. It took him like at least an hour to kill the cruel offwidth beast. I never climbed an offwidth before, but I can tell you, never again, and surely not leading it, it so freaky!! Red is now my hero. The 4th pitch went through some trees and dirt to the Tantalus ledge. Here we decided to continue with the Cerberus route. No cracks here, but pure face climbing with again "modest" space between the bolts and really hard moves. I tried an 5.11d, which is like 7a or 7a+ but it was like climbing 8a in Freyr, and I couldn't do the thing.

Monday we tried the ultra classical Grand Wall route. But here to we couldn't reach the top. I'm not a crack jamming master yet. I really shitted my pants on a right facing corner, the Split Pillars, and Red had to do it. So we lost some time and had to come down again. But I'm also conquered my fears on a length a little bit lower, with bolts placed at least 10m apart from each other, easy route but scary.

Hails

... in Squamish, the land of milk, honey and bears

After more than 16 hours on the plane, a lot of cramps, severe control by people who don't like their job and who want to fuck up your day by asking everything from A to Z about what you're going to do in the US, taking fingerscans, making photos of my confused face without waiting till I looked properly at the camera and so turning Tim and me into first class terrorists, impeding our climbingquest, sleeping merely 4 hours on the floor in the airport of Seattle, sitting 6 hours on the bus and walking an hour with all our bags in a shopping cart that, with the intervention of local Indian Squamish gods, magically appeared to us at the busstation where they dropped us off , we finally reached our destination for the following weeks, Squamish. This is the country of the 3 W's: water, woods and wildlife, but also of BIG cars, but really decadent and expensive food. The setting is really amazing, there is even still snow on the tops of the mountains that are surrounding the lake. We found a basic campsite that's located just at the foot of The Chief, a big granite wall of  600m high. Here is where we're gonna do a lot of trad climbing. I really hope I get dezombified  soon, this night we slept for 12hours uninterrupted, and still I feel like being 80. As soon as we get back to the campsite, we nonetheless will begin with unravelling the mystery of how to become local jamming heros...

hails

 

The Chief in the front and in the background

A new saga begins...

Finally I managed to escape from the dungeons of university and throw off the chains of indoctrination. Now the time has come for another new climbingquest, this time to the US and Canada. Together with Tim, a.k.a. Red, we'll leave Europe for a full 3 month trip to the most known cliffs of western North America. First we'll head to Squamish near to Vancouver to do some crack climbing. There I hope to meet Siebe Vanhee, a friend of mine and an excellent climber, who is now on his way to Smith Rock, Oregon. This friday is the day the adventure starts, stay tuned for more...

Btw I'm not this muscled "yet".

   Hails