Four days in to the road trip and Colin flew out to join Susan and I yesterday. His first comment was , “I want to get on to something hard and slabby ” . Well it would be rude not to put him on the sharp end of Motorhead so Susan and I shared a knowing smile and let his youthful excitement and self belief lead him on to the blank , runout and quite necky 6b pitches. Stay tuned for the outcome later today.
We’ve been based in Oberwald and climbing in the Grimsel/Handegg area and tomorrow head up to a hut base and climb and photograph routes around there for a few days before the weather breaks again. Quite where we’ll go after that is open , depending on where looks best , maybe valle del orco in Italy and then hopefully into Chamonix for the last few days of the trip next week if the weather looks okay.
Day 1 Susan and I managed to get a 10 pitch 5b route done in spite of an unfavourable forecast . The heavy rain for the preceding week was just about drying but sections were still wet so luckily it wasn’t that hard
We had just topped out before the rain started and got back down to the sacks in a couple of hours before the heavens really opened.
Luckily the unstable weather that has battered the Alps for the past few weeks now seems to have cleared for a few days leaving the S facing slopes great to be on . We’ve been trialing the new Rab pertex Equilibrium range for Spring Summer 2015 and the kit is super light and just right when you need a wind layer with minimum bulk or weight. When deciding whether to carry it or not to carry it , its a no brainer.
Slab climbing , I’ve realised isn’t for me . maybe I just don’t trust my feet enough on the blank featureless slabs that are common here or maybe the hole in the tip of my rockshoes that I hadn’t noticed before is just unsettling me but I’m happier on routes where there are actually holds, strange that.
The walk out to El Dorado is amazing with picture postcard views and situations. The overflow from the neighbouring hydro scheme thunders down the mountain side and throws up huge amounts of spray making getting a clean shot difficult but just managed a few that were usable.
Don’t quite know when we’ll next have any wifi to post images so thats it for a few days, Thanks for reading and following the posts , appreciate it .
