Rain, rain, rain!

Not a great deal has happened since my last post due to really bad weather, which is why there has been a bit of silence from me. Just as we were getting some momentum, the rain came in in a big way and washed away our hopes and dreams! So we have done a lot of sitting around playing scrabble and drinking mulled wine, reminiscing about when we were climbing. We have had the occasional good day and those have been fun but it is hard to get projects done with long gaps of rain.

I have been lucky really as one of the boulders I was trying stays dry in the rain so I could continue to work this. It is called Alphane Moon (8A) and is a really fun climb. Kind of like board climbing on small but positive crimps. It was in varying condition as the low cloud often meant that the holds would be a bit damp but often it was in fairly good nick. It finally succumbed a couple of days ago I am glad to say and now the weather is picking up so we can return to other things we were trying. Hopefully this spell of good weather will continue!

We also went up to a cool crimpy wall at Chironico with two lines on it: Made in Norway (7B) and Made in Ticino (7C). I tried them both by lamp light after doing Alphane Moon but was so tired and hungry that I was useless. We went back the next day and they both went with not much trouble. The harder of the two felt more like it was a test of pain threshold then strength with the crux move being catching and moving off a razor sharp crimp! Good fun problems though.

Kook has also had some success in the last couple of days doing Komilator (8A) and Souvenir (8A+). The former he did in a short session (about 30 mins) and the latter he topped out in the wet, so very good effort I think! :) Will post some pictures of them later on....



So, hopefully there will be better conditions and more climbing for us now, giving me more to post soon!

Mina