2015-03-20

Climbing Sunneplättli

The weather forecast predicted five days of sun followed by two rainy days followed by five sunny days. Guess what the two rainy days were supposed to be? Exactly - the weekend! So I sent an email to the climbers mailing list whether anyone would be willing to spontaneously take Friday off and join me for some action outdoors. I didn't expect much on such short notice, but in the end Jochen, Ivan, Michael, Samuel, Vinay and I went up to the Sunneplättli crag at lake Lucerne. Andrey didn't join because a coin flip decided he had to go paragliding instead. Oh the opportunity costs! ;-)

Samuel and Vinay
Jochen
Michael

It turned into a beautiful and very successful day of climbing. Michael won "most hardcore of the day" trophy for mountain biking up to the crag and back. Last week on the same crag, we worked our way West to East. This time we went the other way around. I have now climbed all of the routes on the wall, except for the two hardest ones. We've tried them on top rope. Fingerschliesser 7a+/7b features an overhanging boulder problem right from the start. We sort of managed to force our way through the first move but got completely stuck after that. Hexentanz 7a felt a lot more reasonable. The crux move up a polished foot hold is still quite far out of reach for me, but for the rest of the route I can at least see how I could climb it cleanly. This time I was sitting in the rope a lot though ;-) Vinay however put up a very strong fight and given a few more burns should be able to send it ("davai, davai!").

Ivan, Samuel, Vinay
Scrambling back down to the road.
Someone converted a conference room at Google into a big camera obscura, so we got to watch the partial solar eclipse in the morning and this beautiful dusk in the evening. Not bad for a day!

I climbed:

  • (Unnamed) 5a
  • Fantasia 5c
  • Flamenco 5c
  • Rasta 5c+
  • Moritz 5c+
  • Chilbitanz 6a
  • Alter Weg 6a+
  • Löchliweg 6b
    (my last climb and crowning achievement of the day)
  • Hexentanz 7a
    (struggling through and cheating on top rope)
  • Fingerschliesser 7a+/7b
    (wasting energy on just the first few moves)
Me in the start of Alter Weg 6a+. Rusty pitons ftw!

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