Grosser Mythen on Sunday, Gaswerk on Monday, a fantastically fun team offsite in "funyaks" on the Vorderrhein on Tuesday and a return to climbing at Engi on Wednesday... this should turn out to be a great week!
I climbed:
Laure and Quarup wanted to test how well "Cafezinho" would fare in his new carrier backpack. Mark joined us and we hiked up the Grosser Mythen once more. The little one seemed to be enjoying himself and strategically slept through the boring parts. I think we can consider the experiment a success. We are good to go for longer missions - definitely high time to teach him climbing! ;-) While the Grosser Mythen is famous for its beautiful vistas we didn't get to enjoy much of any. It felt more like sitting in a steam room. On the plus side it stayed dry safe for a little drizzle towards the end.
Back home we watched the (underwhelming and boring) soccer match between Germany and Slovakia. I'll always cheer for the underdog, but they have to at least put up a fight... Anyway, we finished the evening with a round of board games. A fun day!
Another day of great weather, so Vasily, Andrey, Alex, Florian and I head back for Engi on Thursday.
This should turn out to be a good week for climbing. I on-sighted a 7a in the gym on Monday (yay me! ;-)) and the weather finally turned for the better so that Quarup, Noemi, Alex and I headed for the crag at Engi after work on Wednesday. At first we wanted to go to the Gallerie Weesen, but thought better of climbing a South facing wall in scorching heat. A wise decision it turned out to be. We had a great time climbing. For Q it was the first and Noemi the second time climbing outdoors.
Desperate for some outdoors action after we've had rain every day for thirty days or so, Iljya, MaVi, Mark and I decided to gamble on the weather forecast and try to scale Brüggler once more. We have a window of a few hours before the daily monsoon is supposed to hit us around noon. The narrow winding mountain road leading to the climb is so wet that some parts are running with almost an inch of water. Not a good sign.
Mark and I make one rope team and Iljya joins up with his fiancee, who has no multi-pitch experience at all. We set out to climb "Direkte Plattenwand", a 5c, while the others are on "Highway", 5b. Since we are using half ropes, we can link multiple pitches in one go. I lead the first pitch and of course get off route and venture into much harder terrain ("Die Namenlose" 6a+). We do a bit of simulclimbing before the rope drag becomes so bad that I have to stop where I am and improvise an anchor from a single bolt and a sling around an hour glass rock formation. I also ran out of quickdraws - I've used 15 on 60 meters of climbing, about one every 4 meters.
Mark passes me and after a few bolts decides to try to traverse back onto our original, easier, route. My improvised hanging belay is quite uncomfortable. I try to shift my weight a bit to get the circulation going in my legs again, slip and crash painfully into the wall. Mark manages to get back onto the original route and we switch leads again. My next lead ends when the weather finally catches up with us and we get caught in a shower of hail that turns the wall into an unclimbable slide.
The hail plays a staccato rhythm on our helmets while I set up the first rappel back down. I takes us two and half rappels back to the ground which means we were about 150 meters up. We got to climb all the interesting parts of the route, the final pitches are easy bushwhacking through trees and scrub. We meet back up with Iljya and MaVi at the car. They bailed much earlier than us and waited, shivering in the cold.
A quick after-work climbing outing. Again to the Gallerie Weesen. Andrey, Iljya, Rafał, Alex and me. It was mostly a day of fail for me. I tried a bunch of routes, some of which I had already climbed cleanly on previous trips, but struggled on all of them. To make matters worse I lost my key in the Mobility rental car and could only retrieve it on Monday.
