South France, Italian Cup and Algund

Hello everybody.

Well, I have to admit that I've been way too lazy to write anything on this blog in the last few weeks, even though I would have had to tell quite a lot of things!

First of all the one-week-trip to South France about a month ago.
We were lucky enough to have a week with perfect weather and so we got the opportunity to get to see a lot of different amazing crags.

                                                                                                                                                               (c) Martin Dejori

The first day we went to Castillon, a crag which is situated right after the Italian border. The climbing there is actually really good. There is a wide range of difficult routes and we had a nice day although it was a little bit too cold.

For the second day of our trip the weather forecast was really bad, and unfortunately the meteorologist was right. So what do you do on rest days?? Exactly! You spent the whole day eating everything you get. Our lunch consisted of: a big bread at the "Subway" restaurant, a Kebab and a Mc Flurry at Mc Donald's =)

                                                                                                                                                         (c) Martin Dejori

The plan for our next day was to drive from Nice to Marseilles and on the road we will have a stop at Cimai, a historical crag where Lynn Hill wrote history by doing the first female ascent of an 8b+ route (Masse Critique).
We had a beautiful day there and on the evening we moved on to Marseilles where we spent our next few days.

                                     (c) Marvin Kobald

                                       (c) Marvin Kobald

                     



















A part of all the traffic in Marseilles we also got to see the amazing amount of rock in the Calanques. We had the best weather you can imagine and we managed to climb some superb lines.

                                                                                                                                                         (c) Marvin Kobald

The last two days we went to Chateauvert. All in all I have to say that this was the crag which inspired me most. The rock quality and the quality of the routes there is just so unbelievably amazing, every movement is just perfect (except of some chipped routes. I really don't understand why you have to chip routes in such an amazing crag).

Unfortunately a week on a climbing trip is definitely passing to fast, and so the end of the trip came far too early. However, the short week in France was awesome and I'm really looking forward to another trip like this.

About three weeks ago I participated at the first Italian Cup of this season, which took place in Milano. I have not been competing for a really long time so I had no expectations for this comp.
In the semifinal round I managed to climb 3 of 4 problems, but as I climbed really bad I was sure that I would not make it into the finals. I was even more surprised as I saw the rankings of the semifinals. I was sitting on the second position right behind my good friend Rudi, who was the only one to climb all 4 problems. Not believing that I really made it into the finals I went into the isolation zone.
The finals were set a little bit too easy so it came down to the attempts. I did all 4 boulders but I messed up the last one, which took me 4 tries to climb it. I ended up in 4th position. Rudi won the competition easily by flashing all the problems. Congrats man =)


Competition climbing can be fun, but what I really love about climbing is still, and will ever be, the rock climbing. So I went to Algund last Friday with Alexandra to jump on some unfinished business. Unfortunately Ale could not climb because she has some problems with her wrist again. She has been injured for way too long the last years and I really hope that it is not that serious again. All the best Ale!
For my part I finally managed to climb this boulder called "The Opportunist". I had to try it for quite a while also because initially I didn't know where it exactly starts. Once I found that out it still took me some time to find the right beta.
This time I knew that I can climb it and with Ales support I fought my way through the 17 moves all the way to the top out. As this is kind of my anti-style boulder I was even happier that I managed to climb this cool line.

Well, that's all for this time. Hopefully I will be able to update my blog more regularly in the next time.
Cheers!