Dry Ice tools

I am an iceclimber. Or more just climber. I climb everything. Buildings and industrial structures for work, bouldering for strength and social fun, routes because I love that, Alpine because I sometimes like to suffer and mixed because I love the technical awkward leverages you do with those sharp tool thingies. Oh, yes and I happen to climb comps too. Worldcups and stuff like that. Way too nervous to do anything good in there but still fun. 

For 1,5 months I've been living in Germany now. At the edge of the Alps in the region Allgäu.

I'm originally Dutch. In the flat country where I was born we only have climbing gyms. No rocks, not even small ones, not even ones small enough to trip over. Really. The Netherlands is just all sand, mud and water. 

That makes it all pretty hard to train for iceclimbing. We only have horizontal ice. Probably the reason Dutch are rather good in speed skating.  

The chance to move to Germany was amazing! 

Dennis, my boyfriend, is writing his final paper for his studies in Industrial Design at a climbing gear company. That company is based in Southern Germany. 

Being without my boyfriend for longer then a month just doesn't work. 

I gave up all I had, even the fridge, couch, my house and my job. And moved in with Dennis. 

I didn't have a new job yet...

Luckily the gear company Dennis now works for was super sweet and offered me a job too! Yay!

And meanwhile we climbed. 

Almost every day. 

My regular training day now goes like this:

Wake up > eat a banana > run to work (8km) > shower > eat breakfast and work > go bouldering during lunch time > eat lunch when working > work till late and drive back with colleagues or with Dennis > eat some food > cycle to the climbinggym > climb till 10 > cycle back > sleep.

But we also have weekends. That are days that we're not supposed to work. But the company I now work for has such a super nice atmosphere that we're even willing to climb with them in the weekends. 

Last weekend ánd this weekend we found ourselves on Saturday in Starzlachklamm, a dark, wet, sketchy cave that just calls for drytooling. Coffee, climbing and more. A perfect way to spent a weekend. On the Sundays we went sportsclimbing. Outdoors. 

So awkward that you can just go outdoors whenever you want. We don't have that back home. 

During the weekdays it was already dark when we got back home. It made no sense to climb outdoors then. 

The good alternative for iceclimbing are the DryIce tools. And I'm one of the lucky ones that got a pair!

I already used them a couple times in the Dutch gyms. There people looked at me like I was crazy and playing a dangerous game with those things. They gave the regular non-iceclimber comments: "oh, thats so easy, you're just holing on to this big grip all the time" or "now you've got so much more reach, that makes climbing just so easy now". 

Right. Just try it.

Here in Germany the voices are surprisingly different!

The first time when we pulled out the tools people stopped climbing to watch us. 

They wondered what this strange stuff was and understood immediately that we were serious about the Winter season. 

Within the time that I now live here two other climbers tried to make replica's and we're starting to have rather fun group tooling sessions in the boulder room (wow, that last bit of this sentence sounds weird when you're a non-climber).

And now I can say a couple things about the tools too:

Dennis has a different brand for his "dryice tools". And we got yet another pair from a Scottish friend. We can clearly say the rubber sling on the DryIce tools gives by far a better grip on the holds compared to the other two brands that we've tried. Also the handles are shaped differently. More comfortable and more realistic, closer to the design of the iceclimbing tools that we use on the comps. It can still have a little tweaking though. We think the upper grip of the tools can be made a little more comfortable by lengthening the pink-rest on the upper grip.

We easily make figure-of-fours and even long reachy swing moves with the tools. Our heavy 100+ kg friend Axel climbed with them as well and even he could easily swing around in the roof. Proving that the things are pretty strong. 

When lead-climbing we use 'spinner leashes'. We want to keep the possibility of climbing with the tools. When one would accidentally drop on a climber or belayer we'd be screwed...

In the Netherlands all the gyms are just toprope, we'd still use leashes then. 

A tricky thing when leading with tools is that you can pop off when clipping. And then you're hanging in your spinner leash... So. When you clip: one tool in your thumb, of the hand that you hold on to the other tool (see picture). The other hand is then free to clip and when you now accidentally would fall you'd just hang in mid-air. 

So far the holds are not getting 'greasy'. I'm not using gloves and when my hands get sweaty I even chalk. In this way I grow thicker skin, which is useful for the long Winter routes. 

Negative thing of climbing with the tools is always that you can't really train precision as well as with real tools on real holds. You never have the same sketchy tricky moves on which you need 200% body tension. 

For that stuff we have to go outdoors and do the real stuff. 

Also speedclimbing, Dennis won a worldcup in that discipline last year, is hard to train with the tools. You're not as free as on real ice (of course) and are limited to the holds on the wall. Though, regular tools won't do any better on an indoor climbing wall. 

It's kind of funny how different it is to climb with tools. I can climb with my hands hard sports routes in the Summer, but then on the start of the Winter season I really need to build up a different kind of strength again. The muscles that I need for the iceclimbing are different from the ones I need for sportsclimbing (there is a big overlap though). 

Being able to climb more with something that simulates ice tools is for that reason super useful. Useful for any iceclimber. 

Now that I figured (of figure-of-foured) the pro's and con's of the tools it's time to head out again. 

Starzlachklamm - drytooling

When most iceclimbers now climb at the Bozeman Icefest (we don't have the money to go there) we enjoy the snow, rocks and ice in Germany this weekend.

Living in Southern Germany gives advantages and disadvantages.
One of the great advantages are the magical climbing areas; of which one of them a dark cold wet, if luckcy frozen, cave with loose rock a.k.a. Starzlachklamm.

Last weekend our colleagues wanted to go there and we were really curious.
Our roommate didn't want to go at all as he just found it an ugly dark hole.
After a slippery icy walk in we figured he was right. And we loved it.

We started with an M8. Daniel Gebel, who bolted most of the routes "commanded" and forbid us to break any of the growing icicles. So it became rather tricky to climb around the fragile curtain instead of into the curtain. Fun!
I think we'd get fired at Edelrid if we'd touch that icicle. So, after some clear comments by Daniel in another route ("don't touch it!") Dennis managed to break off an icicle. Daniel watched it happen. He closed his eyes and shook his head. He mumbled something about "tourists" and "less salary"...

Daniel pointing out how to climb the route. Simon climbs.

Dennis yoga-ing around the curtain.

And then there was this new route Daniel bolted, an extension/direct start of an already existing route. If Dennis could please climb it first so he could flash the route he joked to us.
And so Dennis went up and unfortunately popped off a sketchy tricky hold on one third of the route.

Dennis clipping in one of the safer points of the M10, Daniel belaying.

The tricky route traversed the roof just above the ground. If you'd fall you almost hit the ground making the name rather fitting the route: Arsch bumpe (or something like that). Every clip in the roof was a 100% grounder.
My turn.
I used a different hold in the roof, not really knowing if it was any better then the thing Dennis had popped off. But it worked. Flash :)
We guess, but I have to say I'm not too good in this guessing game, that it's around M10.
Daniel himself was rather ill and the antibiotics gave him too much gravity force around him. The flash attempt unfortunately didn't work out for him.

Daniel figuring his way up the M10.

The next day we were convinced by Ritchi to join him at Chinesische Mauer (Chinese Wall) a beautiful sportsclimbing area in Austria not far from Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Dennis isn't very fond of the vertical stuff and really didn't get it how we ended up here. Icicles and snow all around and we are sportsclimbing?!

Ritchi in his project. He took an extra day off this Friday to try it again. Maybe he did it...?

I didn't do a very good job either and felt rather challenged in the 7a's and 7b's that I climbed.
Maybe climbing and running every day and working long days for a whole week doesn't help much either. Guess we just needed a restday.

Next weekend. "Fully rested" after the annual Vaude Christmas party with our colleagues. We went to bed around 02:30 and promised to go climbing at Starzl again. Simon and Simon would pick us up around 11. It took us a while to drink enough coffee and eat enough Brezen before we finally headed for Starzl.
On the way in I read Will Gadd's blog-post to the others in the car. It's about modded tools, grading routes and the Olympics. A fantastic honest piece of writing about all the things that also have been in our heads the last weeks. The ridiculous grading of some routes (like the M12 I onsighted in Ouray, which I wasn't allowed to donwgrade), the 'tweaking Worldcup rules' by adding extra length to your iceaxes and the "so called" iceclimbing at the Sochi Olympics where some iceclimbing athletes are going. But also the feeling of recognition in the writing about the Gecko sisters and the failing&falling issue I also feel when I climb.
It's a must read for every mixed climber.

Rather broken, even after all the good coffee, we slowly hiked up to the dark hole again.
The ice had clearly grown and the curtain that we were forbidden to touch was twice the size now.
Meanwhile Simon (Herr Graf) promised himself the only thing he came for was drinking good coffee.
Still he managed to find himself swinging his way up the classic WI4 on the right side of the cave. More then he ever expected to do this day.

Herr Graf and his coffee

Meanwhile we climbed the M8 again without touching the curtain. "Dennis, your helmet almost hits the curtain now!" With his head turned in a awkward way sideways he yoga-ed his way further up.

Now the goal was to climb the big roof. Traverse from right to left through the whole cave. Michi Wohlleben bolted his M13 called "Pray for Power" in there. Crossing all the "easier" roof climbs (M11, M11+, M12...)
We looked, walked up and down, watched and discussed all possible ways and figured we'd need a local for figure how that thing would go. Suddenly the roof looked like a big mess of bolts and pitons without a proper line in between.
Defeated we decided to go up a line that we tried at the end of the day last week. "Pappi's kleine Liebling" an M11 yet again bolted by Daniel. He told us that once you find the right sequence it's not that hard anymore. He was right, we didn't find the right holds and thus didn't figure the right sequence back then.
One small hold at the start. You step on a bunch of balancy stones to reach the thing, then hang yourself in a figure of four and reach for the next thing. And then you hang yourself a big bunch of figure of fours and figure of nines to reach the end of the roof.
Right there, if you don't have the right hold your axe with you hand still fixed on it will get stuck, squeezing off your fingers causing rather bruised knuckles. So I failed. I had to kick the axe out with my feet to get it back again...
The clipping is as tricky as in the M10: fail and you'll hit the ground.
I wasn't that scared actually.
But Dennis was.
He held the rope so tight that I had the feeling I was pulling it out of the grigri myself when climbing. At one point the rope was kind of stuck in the grigri. Hanging in a figure of four, having cold hands and having to pull the rope out of the grigri without falling off didn't really help me. Fail. Again.
Meanwhile Dennis did climb the thing. Making gorilla-tennis-player sounds on his way up the route. A good mixture of scare and power. "Clipping, no not clipping, you got me, got me, watch me now, ergh, clipping, okay, okay, urrrrgh, uhhh".

Dennis at the end of the negative roof in the M11.

Meanwhile it was dark and snowing. I really was frustrated. I wasn't even too pumped, could do all the moves static and none of the moves felt really hard. Okay, let's just take the headlamps out and give it one more go. Now rather give me a grounder instead of a tight rope, now I know that I should skip the nuckle-duster hold and then it should just be fine.
And it was. Completely silent, the two Simons were surprised of my silent climbing, I figured-of-foured my way easily through the moves. The long, long move after the roof bit was just a nice static lock-off and I didn't use the tree that was silently calling "kick me, swing your axe in me". Top. What a hassle.  Tum, di, dum, dum, dum. Suddenly the song "Clint Eastwood" from Gorrilaz popped up in my head after watching the pictures of my own shade on the wall in the dark. Reminding me of the videoclip of the music. The song stayed.

Tricky clipping in the darkness. Picture by Simon Graf.

Awkward shadows in the dark hole. Picture by Simon Graf.

Now one question remains: how do we need to climb this M13 roof thing? Because I need a real project now :)

Read Dennis' view on this Saturday here: dennisvanhoek.nl

Ettringen is niet Eng

Ettringen isn't scary.
Really, it's okay to fall in a cam.
...if you place it correctly, it the rock holds, if your foot doesn't slip, if you don't get tangled in the rope, if you don't pull out any holds, if it's not onsight, if it's not raining, if...

Last week I vistited Ettringen together with Frank Penders (pro photographer and climber) and maybe the most awesome climber in the Netherlands: Arvid Kegt.
Frank and Arvid wanted to know more about trad climbing. We invited ourselves for a long weekend to the German Basalt cracks.





It rained quite a bit but it gave us time to practise skills and figure what those weird devices are used for.
I thought them all about cams, nut, friends and their functions, differences and placements.
On the second day we vistited two different areas and figured we are all so chilled that we almost forgot that climbing is 'work'.
Frank and Arvid got more confidence in the cams and even dared to fall and place them in harder routes.
I was surprised how fast they developed the skills and got enough time to climb as well.








In the evenings we cooked a big meal together full of veggies and other healthy stuff.
After a day I felt we were already a team.
We never climbed outdoors together before but we just had so much fun!











In the weekend I decided to try 'Seepferdchen' and Arvid went onto another hard sports route that is beautifully situated on the corner of a Basalt pillar: Exquilibrium. 
Frank hung in the nice line called Harakiri just right of the other two routes.
I wanted to climb Seepferdchen with placing all gear. Toprope would be fake, with in-situ gear it's not the same either...
I failed on my lead attempt on the first day after I toproped the route quite easily.
So next day.



We had a good night and took it all easy in the morning. Slacklining, another cup of tea, good breakfast and some theoretical stuff about trad climbing.
And then...it started raining...
Like raining-raining.





I called my weather-channel (my brother Diederik knows a lot about weather forecasts because of his Windsurfing addiction) and figured it would stay bad for the rest of the day...
We decided to visit the nearby city Koblenz.
After a little drive a visit to the (boring) climbing shop we found a small coffee-bar in the Center of Koblenz: Kaffeejunge. The coffee was delicious and the brownie was perfectly tasteful.
What made it all even better was the surprisingly entertaining view.



The coffee bar is located just at the side of the actual shopping quarter. So it had a slight touch of the people visiting the shops and got the 'other' people walking by as well. People visiting the bank, the hairdressers, the University...
It became a blend of entertainment for us. The woman with the broken bike, the Chinese guy on the children's bike, the woman that cleaned the bank after closing hours (she was just perfect and did the classic bend-over for Arvid...he loved it...) We unfortunately figured that the German woman are not too pretty there.





Later we took a drink somewhere else and ate pizza.
Restdays are always hard when you really want to climb but this one was just fun!

The next day, our final day was fresh and good. I climbed Seepferdchen and Arvid realised he needs to train harder. He did a brave try in Seepferdchen and almost flashed it (with half in-situ gear), scared to let go and fall :)
Loads of unfinished things and new projects to try. So reason enough to visit Ettringen again next week.

Time to go home again, but with a little butterfly in my stomach. This weekend was good!

Ibbenbüren climbing weekend

Been quiet on my blog lately.
Sorry for that.

Been busy with...climbing.

A competition in Arnhem (5th, quite okay but should have been better) and last weekend I was involved in family business with Dennis' family (which was quite nice actually) and of course...climbing. This time another area in Germany, not Ettringen but Ibbenbüren was our destination. For the first time.

Eveline told us to go there and borrowed her topo to us. (Thanks)

It was quite okay. Pretty friendly area, good for families, beginners, semi-beginners and even for us there was something to climb.

Though, when you get there for the first time without any guidance it might be hard to figure the right path to the climbing sectors. The 'treasure map' in the topo only helped just a bit...

And when it's as damp and hot as it was this weekend, it's quite hard to climb without chalk!

Most is bolted but I had the chance to play again with my 'Elbsandstein knots'.

Fun and worth another weekend!

Climbing has to be fun!

Sometimes it's not just hardcore rock-pulling.
Last weekend I was in Ith (Germany) together with the Student Alpine Club from Utrecht (USAC).
And, we had loads of fun :)