Iceland part deux

Saturday climbing again.

This time with pro-photographer/carpenter Gummi.

(Should get some lessons from him on hammering...pitons)

The climbing was sweet, the pics even better.

See here the result.

(Later more)

Sólheimajökull

Went for a day of overhanging-glacier-ice-climbing with Gummi and Siggi.

I tested my brand new Nomic and Ergo axes...

Gummi says: "fór í svakalega töff klifur í dag í Sólhimajökli með Marianne og Fletcher Christian. Tokum fult af myndum og videoum sem byrtast. þessar axir vá þvílikar græjur vá"

And it was so sweet!

Best thing was the dinner and hottub afterwards ;)

Holland - France - Iceland - Holland - Austria

Jep, I'm travelling quite a bit these days.

First working in France, now holidays in Iceland and then a competition in Austria.

As my internet connection is pretty bad and unreliable, I just type this as a little message and try to upload just a couple pics.

No real ice/mixed climbing yet. But I'll be 'on the rocks' next days :)

Next time more news...

Stéphanie

Fellow iceclimber and pro photographer Lukasz Warzecha made a little documentary about Stéphanie Maureau: iceclimber, sportsclimber, alpinist and aspirant mountain guide.

Inspiring!

Iceland's financial crisis

I used to live in Iceland for a couple years. Exactly in the time that the Icelandic bank system collapsed.

I read and speak Icelandic and so I read the free newspaper (Frettabladid) every day and regularly read one of the other newspapers as well. (Morgunbladid)

I was alway surprised by the lack of information the newspaper gave on the crisis. Before the whole crash, I knew more about it through the Dutch and other foreign newspapers then through the national Icelandic newspapers.

Also other news always seems to be outdated. Often the news articles didn't really reflect what was happening in the world, or I already read the whole version of the story a couple days ago in the online version of any Dutch newspaper.

Now, often people told me that the Icelandic newspapers are very proper, with a good standard, I almost started to believe in that.

But, today I read an article in the Icelandic-English paper Grapevine.

'The Watchdog that didn't bark'. About how the Icelandic newspapers spread political propaganda instead of hard facts about the crisis. And, as I still read the online version of the newspapers, to keep up with what's going on in Iceland...I noticed they didn't change for one bit...

You can read the story here on Grapevine.is

Adventure racing

Some people do more then just climbing...

Like Wodi and his team. (Team Falke sportswear with Fokko Hoeksma, Ton van Os, Sophia van der Linden and Wouter-Dirk Huitzing)

They're taking part now in the World Championship Adventure Racing.

At the moment they're not 'number one' but I just find it pretty hard-core just taking part in such a thing anyway :)

On the website Vertical Dissidents you can follow the adventures (in Dutch)

Wodi texted to Vertical Dissidents: "At the moment we're 24hrs behind on the number one and we're forced to take shortcuts. The third MTB track was pretty heavy, we'd been taking too much time there."

Here a little vid of one of Wodi's previous races in the Netherlands.

What I do besides climbing...teaching more climbing

My mum is PE teacher (she just celebrated her 40th anniversary as teacher, waauw!) and she invited me to give some climbing lessons in her gym.

In return I get free food in Hotel-Mamma.

I was proud having the kids to learn the belay steps, figure-of-eight knot and more in just one hour per group!

Hard work and pretty good to see all kids smile, have fun and learn something completely new.

As it was the first time the climbing wall had been used, my mum wrote a little article for the school website.

Lead Climb-off Rock Steady

As I'm working in climbing gym Rock Steady, I was one of the four putting up the routes for the climb-off of this weekend.

The climb-off is a small competition to give people a last chance to qualify for the Dutch Leadclimbing Championships.

So, the routes had to be quite hard, quite proper and fair.

And thats ...quite difficult.

But we had fun, worked hard and this is the result. (Thanks to Jerry and Robbert for the pics, fun, belaying, screwing and filming)

Eric Frankenmolen missing! Update: found!

Lost & found...

Eric indeed went to Cham. So, you can stop searching!

He's doing fine and will return to the Netherlands somewhere soon.

An important message from Menno Boermans:

Dear all,

Eric Frankenmolen left his home in Eindhoven, Friday october 1st. He is been missing since then.

He did not take any medicine or liquid food (he needs to take his food by a tube in his stomach) with him.

He is most likely wearing a yellow Mammut jacket.

Please let me know if you see or hear anything from him.

We also have to calculate the possibility that he is on his way to Chamonix.

Thanks! Menno Boermans (info@mennoboermans.ch)