Bodegraven was for the first time (evarrr) the scenery for the Dutch Championships Iceclimbing. Thomas Knoope had built an amazing pillar and the NKBV got to the idea to hold a competition on the ice. The first on natural ice.
We were lucky with the weather, today it's around +4 degrees Celcius, but at the time of the comp we had a classic Winter scenery: snow, weather alarm, frost, hot chocolate, gluhwein, and a big bunch of iceclimbers.
We were early for an interview with the Dutch television (SBS6) and earlier we had radio interviews, more television attention, photographers... It was surprising how much media attention we got for the event! And of course we were happy with it, as it's a big boost for the sports. Now, if you're Dutch and you were listening to the radio or watching television on Friday, I'm sure you finally know my sport exists :)
On the wall there were red markings telling where to climb and what's 'off'. It looked all pretty obvious until half way, where you had to be careful where to step and the moves got longer. The last move was really dynamic to the top of the wall: Completely out of balance I tried to reach for the top, missed, got a warning... and in my second attempt I succeeded!
Pffft, that was hard to reach the top, and it was just ice, not even drytooling!
Fedor I thought, would be the one to beat me after Dennis. (Dennis obviously climbed a bit faster then me) but to my surprise there were more: it turned out to be Harald and Leopold who did really well! I climbed just a bit better by reaching the top and so got second after Dennis in the overall ranking.
My first Dutch medal in iceclimbing :) Really cool.
At home we also made a little wall. But the frost is already gone again so we had just a 'flake' to climb on. Fun for the kids, no challenge for us. But, we increased our wall, improved the watering-system and made it higher. So let the frost come again...we will climb...on ice in the Netherlands. How weird is that?!
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