Dolomites adventure

For almost three weeks in the Dolomites. 
So much to do, so scary, so beautiful!



Day 1. 
Via Demetz-Guck



Day 2. 

We have no idea what we climbed :(
The idea was the Messner on the 2. Sellaturm. 
Some other climbers said the route was wet and bailed without trying. 
We climbed on what seemed the first pitch and since then we were "lost" on the wall. Every 10 to 15 meters we found something as pro (little cords, scary nut/cam placements and inventive pitons) Meanwhile underneath us another group started and bailed on the first pitch...
Thanks to Dennis motivation and all our pitons we made it to the top. 
A local guide told us that the route was almost always wet and he had big respect for us climbing the face of that wall. He also told us the actual start of the route was more to the left. No idea which 'left' he meant.
The Messner is originally just 8 pitches graded UIAA 6. We did it in at about 15 pitches with all the traversing. The grade felt like somewhere in between UIAA 6 and 7+.
Welcome to the Dolomites?




Day 3. 

First 30min hike uphill, then a big 3,5hour educational 'climb' through the historical Italian WW1 tunnels to the top of the cliff then 1,5hr hike to the start of the viaferrata, then 1hr of 'wire-climbing' (yes we were fast) and then 1,5hrs walking back to the car. It wasn't real climbing, it was supposed to be a restday but it was so much fun!



Day 4. Restday in the super touristic Cortina, and it's raining. Perfect planning :)

Later when we have a better internet connection pictures and more of course. 

Much later: Venice (Venezia). 

Speedclimbing, Climbuz and the Outdoor lecture

The last week before real climbing starts again.

It's finally Sunny here in the Netherlands, making it feel like Summer.

Summer fun 

All the stress of getting everything done in time also belongs to the Summer feeling I guess.
Tax forms, invoices, MOT for my car(s), some work, a lecture for Outdoor, preparations for the Dutch Drytool Event, Expeditie Geluk, preparations with the Van Hoek family for the family climbing adventure and much more...
Oh yes, and Climbuz has to be ready for the Summer trip too.

Oh, yes, and I lost a bit of wisdom

In between I try to climb too.
Although, never enough... I wish I could climb twice a day, every day but three times a week seems the average for now. Making me feel slow and fat.

Preparations for the Van Hoek adventure

Climbing in the rain with the Van Hoek family

Apparently I'm not too fat yet, as I ended in 4th place on two national leadclimbing competitions. With that I'm good enough to be in the finals of the national lead competition.
If I had more time to climb...
Apparently I'm not too slow either as I reached the podium of the open national ("student") speedclimbing competition too. Second place.
And so, so close to gain the first place! I made a classic Marianne-mistake: I should have jumped to the top, instead I reached...static doesn't work when you climb on full speed :(
Roelien was smart enough to jump and won.

Interbest/NSAC/NKBV Speedclimbing: Battle the Wall

With Roelien on the first place

Dennis also took second place, but we're still not sure if he was second...or first?

About the fat issue, I went to a nutritionist last week, to talk about food, energy, efficiency and more.
There's so much nonsense to be found about nutrition, weight and health related to sports, that I found it a better idea to ask a pro about it all. As marathon runner and a non-believer in extra proteins he had some interesting research and facts to show me. He gave me some fairly simple but interesting tools to use. Let's see how that will work in the rest of this year.

My carrot cake recipe. The main reason of being too heavy I think

My parents are not worried about any fat issue for the next two months. They'll be cycling again. This time to Santiago following the French coast line.
My mum left all behind by retiring, my had is happy to join the journey (but still has a couple years of working left...)

My parents on their way to Breda. 

I also went to Schoorl.
Collecting rubbish for half a day and MTB for the rest of the day.
As ambassador of Respect the Mountains it was good to see how much effect a little bit of work has. Together with more then 60 volunteers and some ambassadors over 700kg of rubbish had been collected within just 2 hours time!
It's impressive to see how much of it is plastic. Even plastic toys were part of what we found.

Plastic soup?

Plastic soldiers and a armless Viking

Dennis has been busy too. First with school. He has a lot to do before he can go to his final traineeship in Germany after this Summer.
At the same time he tries to fix Climbuz.
A new engine, a fully working gearbox again and now everything is electric it's a lot harder to understand what might be wrong. (...or do I just have to reset the accelerator with the computer...?)
Since today the van works again! He took Climbuz out for a ride and hopefully we'll get it fixed before we reach Friedrichshafen on Wednesday.

New paint layer by night

The first start...and the engine works!

Test drive

My two cars have MOT again and I decided I should sell my lovely Golf 1.

Meanwhile I've been working on my lecture. At OutDoor in Friedrichshafen I'll hold a lecture about education. A motivational lecture about educational systems with a motivational link to the Outdoor Industry.
You're all welcome to join on Thursday 13:00h in room London.

One of the drawings in my lecture.

Now time to cycle, climb and work again.
Just two more days! Yay!

Iceland 2 Arrival in Seydisfjordur

After three horrible boat days we finally arrived in Iceland!

↵ Use original player

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Iceland 2012 pt 1 The Boat from Marianne van der Steen on Vimeo.

Iceland Summer 2012

Day one of our Iceland trip.We made it all the way,more then 1800km from France to Denmark. We're waiting for the boat and found a perfect spot to camp :)

In between running, sea-swimming, 'WWII-crimpin', 4WD Syncro driving and being bored because of the rain, we found some internet to upload some pictures of our trip.

Home...in the flat country

After one 8a, some ED/ED+, hard boulders, long walks a 1/2 marathon offroad, loads of pasta&tomato sauce, many Alpine roads and 2 months without a shower...we're back home again.

But not after a quick stop in Kandersteg (sportsclimbing, mountain running and drytooling in the sun -yes, drytooling is a sport for all year round- ) and later a stop in Ettringen.

Yestderday was so hot that it was impossible to climb. Which made us go for a swim instead. Laacher see it was. After all this sitting, driving and baking in the sun I decided it was time for a bit of movement. A bit became a lot and became a test. Wondering how fit I actually was (I noticed I could run uphill for 50 mins on 1200m height without getting tired and doing an offraod mountain run for 1:10hrs without getting any muscle-soreness or sore knees)

So how far could I run on a warm evening? It became 27km in less then 2 hours. All offroad in the hills around the Laacher See. It's not advisable to try this when you didn't eat enough and forgot to drink the regular amount of water you need on a day... Though, I did. Next is of course to run a marathon, offroad in the mountains :) Which is 'nothing' if you compared it to what runners with the Mont Blanc ultra-trail will run this week.

This morning it was cold enough to try climbing. Around 8 in the morning we had our warm-up and around 12 we had to leave because of the pressing humid heat.

In between we climbed quite some things including 'magical project' Mut der Verzweiflung. I tried this route before and once I knew how hard it was and that it had never been climbed by a woman (at that time, now it's been climbed by German local Melanie). I'm not so good in 'tempering myself' so nervous as I was every time I'd get upon the route I just failed. Getting scared, pumped, unfocused, basically just far too nervous to climb it...

But now after a Summer full of trad (7a on 3000m height) I was just far too fit to miss out on this 'simple-almost-below-sea-level-climb-on-a-hill-instead-of-a-3000m-heigh-mountain'.

I toproped it as warmup and 'walked' through all the moves with surprising ease. And I knew I had to get on lead. Nervous. Shit. Trembling, shaky on my legs even before I made any move. I got pumped after 2 moves. Shit.

I belayed Dennis, went for a walk with him (he knew I got nervous...too nervous to climb...) and ate a waffle, drank some water and relaxed.

Ready this time.

I climbed it, had the right locks on the right places and even had time to relax and shake my arms. Not that I got pumped, it's just a habit: Chalk up, shake, look, chalk, shake, move, look, move, shake, climb, chalk, shake, chalk, move...I'm a slow climber.

But I did it. Gear on the right place and never scared, pumped or in trouble. So cool, it felt like climbing 6b!

I have to say, this is so much easier then 7a trad in a long long multipich :) Officially Mut der Verzweiflung is graded as 7b/7b+. I'm not so good in grading routes. I'd guess it's more a 7a. But thats just because it went so easy right now. Guess I'm fit :)

Now, home again, I have to work again. Earn some money and go out again as soon as possible!

Here the three last movies of the 'Summer climbing trip 2011'.

Chamonix/Petit Dru and more

Sometimes you just neeeed a restday.

Like one we needed today. Good weather, clouds in the mountains, bit of rain in the morning. Perfect for a restday.

We washed in the public toilets this morning, posted the usual cards to our families at home and now enjoying coffee in internet café 'Enjoy' in Chamonix.

Dennis is still at our 'home' reading a book about the history of the SAS (nice book it is, full of adventure and real stories)

The reason for this restday was the following adventure:

Petit Dru, Américaine Directe.

Dennis told me about the route Roeland never stopped talking about the thing, I know Jelle wants to climb it and we...well, we tried :)

Mission was to do a ground-up onsight attempt in a day. I had the honour to try and onsight all the difficult pitches (6a-6c/7a/7a+) We started quite late, but that was good, we figured later. It was cold, all water was frozen, even the little melting streams in the route were frozen. Later we met two experienced climbers who were forced to go down because of frostbite (they started too early, around 4 o clock)

We managed to get all the way to the big block, which is 21 rope lengths (following the English topoguide) We had to wait for two who were struggling in the next pitches. A good rest was welcome, but took us quite some time. We lay in the sun, warming up our frozen toes, fingers and water. Thirsty as we were, but we had to wait for the snow to melt...

Dennis was tired, I was tired but I wanted to do my mission: onsight the two hardest pitches of the route. So we went up, a short V up to a little bloc and then it started. A finger crack that first started with a chimney struggle behind a stuck flake. I struggled, go so out of breath because of the height but made it all the way to the belay in the middle of the long corner. Happy, tired, thirsty, hungry, one hard pitch to go! Dennis struggled his way up, carrying the little backpack and the tagline. We had to wait again for the party in front of us, but it was welcome, again. And there I went again. I screamed, tired, pumped, out of energy, and when I finally had a good fingerlock I just couldn't hold on anymore! My arms were so tired. Shit, no, fuck, kut, no I cursed to myself and had to let go. I failed! Al that climbing and then failing there! Damn!

I lost all my motivation there for a second.

It was late already, we'd had to abseil in darkness and, because I didn't do what I came for we decided to go down. We abseiled, got our rope stuck in some shit (nasty!!) got the rope stuck again, and again and finally got down...It was 12 o clock already, time for an evening meal: 'chicken with herb'. And at that time all food tastes like a four Michelin star meal.

We slept till 9 in the next morning, ate our porridge and some cereal bars and went down, over the moraines, through the swamp, and then stopping every 2 metres to eat blueberries.

We only have 10 days left. Hopefully the weather will stay good enough to try this route again or any other beautiful line.

Tomorrow rain and thunder in the forecast so time for sportsclimbing.

Pictures: Dennis & me on the Dru (sorry, couldn't flip the pictures...)

Biz Badile, Oberalppass and Chamonix: Summer?

Finally, we did it. What an adventure it was. The weather was good (for just one day, when we came back in the valley it rained again).

Meanwhile a lot of things 'happened'. We traveled through Swiss, visited Chur and the Oberalppass and climbed a horrible but nice (how is that possible?) 10 pitch slab.

Now we 'landed' (or stranded) in Chamonix, as the weather was supposed to be best in the West Alps. Still it's raining here and no weather to get onto the higher mountains.

We're walking around in Cham, internetting in the Mac Donalds and uploading the unfinished version of our Piz Badile video.

Now up to the guide office to figure more about the routes we intend to climb :)

Photo's: Piz Badile and others.

Boulder and more. Summer climbing.

Travelling around in Engadin and the Chiavenna region. Border hopping you can call it. One day on the Italian side (Chiavenna) the other day on the Swizz side again (Breggalia/Engadin valley)

Due to the bad weather conditions we haven't had the chance to climb what we're here for.

Bouldering is nice, sportsclimbing is fun though but the idea is to get onto the Piz Badile, Bernina and other beautiful and high mountains.

So far we were forced to enjoy ourselves in the valley. Sportsclimbing in Plaun da Lej, bouldering in Stampa and Multipitch in Lirone.

(see video's)

Fun to find out that climbers in the region developed a whole new bouldering area. Boulders varying form F4a to F8a I guess. We spent the first part of our session with brushing way all the moss and dirt before we could actually get up the stones. We tried quite some hard things and set up some new problems. And then the rain came in...as it does every day. Just a bit but enough to bet all boulders wet and the grass soggy.

Today we're back in Vicosoprano, stealing internet and uploading some movies. Hopfully the weather will stay good enough for us to go up into the moutains. Piz Badile (Cassin route) is our goal for tomorrow. Sweet!

Pictures: Dennis & me bouldering in Stampa, the 'Paula Fliegt' street theatre in Castelmur, Dennis in 'Linda' the multipitch we climbed in Lirone.

Val di Mello

After a couple of days in Friedrichshafen it was time to head for the Alps.

Too bad thats it's raining everywhere...

Two days ago we woke up with snowy mountains all around. One of the locals told us he hadn't seen this much snow in July in 32 years!

Hopefully it will get better in the next weeks.

Today is restday because I slipped when walking down from a climb. Luckily nothing really bad, it was just bleeding a lot: my ear. Actually it's all fine now so I can climb again tomorrow :)

The climb we did was the classic of the area Luna Nasciente. max. 6b+ but with a 'rope solo' 3a pitch on a slab and all on trad. Too bad for us, it started raining when we were in the 6th pitch. So I was forced to lead the 3a slap in the rain! The wall changed from solid friction into one big waterfall. Luckily we made it to the top and we able to walk down over the slippery paths...

Before this adventure we had one day of bouldering (Val di Mello is famous of bouldering) and we tried to find the route with the vague topo. We walked for 6 hours in total and really didn't get it where the right path was supposed to be... We climbed some vague unrated single pitch and as it was already past 5 we decided to bail and go back to our free campsite in San Martino. Luckily we had more good charms around us yesterday. We found the right path and the route.

Restday means laptop charging/internet/movie/wash-day. Dan that's exactly what we do right now. Though all works pretty slow and I don't have too much time. Meaning I just uploaded a movie without music...sorry! I'll refine the thing as soon as possible.

Spring!

In Iceland you have just two seasons: Summer and Winter. The in-between-version doesn't exist. Understandable. It's often just cold there: t-shirt weather is nice, but far not as nice as t-shirt weather in the Netherlands.

So, I'm enjoying the sun!