Summer holiday 2016

The summer holiday 2016 was characterised not just by lots of climbing but also by pushing boundaries, learning many new things and making great tours. I was so lucky to have two months of holidays, enough time to make a small trip in Europe!

Together with Noël and José, I started the holidays in the Frankenjura (Germany). A few weeks ago was my first trip to this area and I climbed my first 7c+ (more about this trip here. This time I was really motivated to climb an 8a. The first few days I used to climb a lot and get used to the pocket climbing style of the Frankenjura. I managed to sent quite some nice 7c's and a 7c+ in the second go, so decided it was time to try a 8a. José suggested Strandcafé, and on the warmest and sweaiest day of the week I gave it a go. Despite the weather it felt doable and I finished the route in my 3rd attempt. Whooo! My first 8a!
Since it didn't felt that hard, I pushed myself into an 8a+, Verbindung. This is a combination line of the 7c+ I climbed on my first Frankenjura trip and a 7c. Also this route fell down pretty easy in the 3rd attempt, so I started dreaming of an 8b. My eye fell on Riesenslalom direkt, a long route with a mono crux and a tricky end. I managed to do the mono crux pretty fast (in the second attempt),but had some trouble with the last hard move. I fell 3 times in the last part of the route, which made this route not just physically hard but also mentally. In the end I climbed it in my 6th attempt. I am very surprised and amazed that in only one week I climbed my first 8a, 8a+ and 8b!

Liebe ohne chance, 7c

After the Frankenjura Noël and me headed to Bergell (Swiss), where the NSAC camping took place. After arriving there we made the plan to climb the Badille, and we went up already the same day. We first wanted to climb the Cassin route, but people there told us it was wet. We changed our mind and focused on Another day in Paradise, but heard from many others that they also planned to do that route. Not willing to queue, we decided to climb the Nordkante. Unfortunately we went wrong somewhere and didn't reached the top, but for sure it was a nice first trip in which we learned a lot.

As the weather was good, we didn't waste time in the valley and went up again to climb the fiamma. Compared to the Badille this is just sportsclimbing multipitch and we managed to climb pretty fast.

Noël on the Badille

Since we had only a few days in Bergell, we had to drive to Courmayeur (Italy) for the CEAT camping after these two trips. In this week we went up to the Torino hut, bivouacked close to there and did some really nice trips. We started with the Tour Ronde (the rock face) with Rik and Jarron. The next day was 'restday' and we did the Entreve ridge. Then it was time for a big trip: the Diablo ridge with Court and Hans. The route definately deserved its name. The difficulty of the climbing is only 4c max, but it felt sometimes harder than the 8b in the Frankenjura, our rope got stuck everywhere and routefinding took ages. Hans and me were a bit slower than Noël and Court and it was dark when we reached the summit of the Mont Blanc du Tacul. As we couldn't find the way down and were tired, we had a bivouac on the top. The next day we went down to Courmayeur, but in our head were still many other peaks and climbs we wanted to do. Two days later we went up again to do some more stuff. Unfortunately bad weather made us failing to climb the Dent du Géant, but we managed to climb the rock pillar le Chandelle (even though it was ice cold). High on the wishlist was the Grand Capuchin, but tiredness forced us to go back to the valley again.

Hans on the Pointe Mediane, one of the 5 towers of the Diablo Ridge

After all these adventures we continued our journey to the Ecrins (France) were some friends were staying. Here we ate a lot (all fat was gone after the mountaineering tours), slept a lot and did some sportsclimbing and long multipitches in the area. Besides climbing we went mountainbiking, rafting and canyoning. It was good fun and a relaxed two weeks to finish the holidays with.

Noël climbing the second pitch (6b+) on the Ponteil

Thanks to Noël for having all the skills and ability to enjoy all of this with me, Green Monkie : ecowear for their great organic shirts and Five Ten for their climbing shoes that are excellent for so many different kinds of climbing :D

A summary of the hardest routes I climbed:
- Riesenslalom Direkt, 8b (redpoint), Frankenjura
- Verbindung, 8a+ (redpoint), Frankenjura
- Strandcafe, 8a (redpoint), Frankenjura
- Vögeln verboten, 7c+ (2nd go), Frankenjura
- Le combat ordinaire, 7c+ (2nd go), Rue des masques
- Du cour à l'ouvrage, 7c (onsight), Mont Dauphin
- Fear Factory, 7c (2nd go), Frankenjura
- Liebe ohne chance, 7c (2nd go), Frankenjura
All other routes graded 7a or higher are on my 8a.nu account

Alpine tours and long multipitches:
- Badille (not finished, 5a+ max)
- Fiamma (via Dente par dente and the 6c on the fiamma)
- Tour Ronde (6b max)
- Entreve ridge (5a+ max)
- Diablo ridge & Mont Blanc du Tacul (4c max)
- Dent du Géant (not finished, 6a max)
- Le Chandelle (route: Bonatti-Tabou, 6b max)
- Paroi des Lys (route: Le haut dans le gaz, 7a max)
- Tête d'Aval (route: Piler Rouge Hebdo, 6b max)
- Le Ponteil (route: Rôle en dalles, 6c max)

More pictures are on my facebook via this link

Update: Outdoor climbing and Lead 2

Wow, a long period passed by since my last blog post. That can mean two things: I didn't do any climbing-related stuff or I was too busy doing climbing-related stuff to write about it. Fortunately, the second thing is the case!

So, where to start with? The outdoor Climbing season started with a couple of day trips to Comblain, in Belgium with Harald. Getting up early in the morning, waking up by the cold air while walking to the busstation, falling asleep again in the bus to the trainstation and in the train towards Eindhoven, waking up again a bit in the car towards Belgium and than getting in the Climbing mode when seeing the rocks! The winter temperatures not only caused frozen hands and feet, but also great friction. This made the two daytrips perfect and I managed to climb two 7c's and some other routes pretty easily. Then I started projecting in an 8a, but there was not enough time to finish it.

Then Noel and me went on a trip to Spain, where we did a lot of walking and some Climbing. It was a really nice relaxed holiday, great to relax after a busy period on university for both of us.

Some cool roof climbing in Spain

A three-day trip to the Frankenjura with José was my first time in the Frankenjura and the first time projecting a route outdoors. Thanks to José it was actually very motivating instead of boring and it made me climb my first 7c+! The beautiful landscape and great rocks as well as some unifinished 8a's makes me very motivated to go back to the Frankenjura as soon as possible! Click >>here<< for the link to the film of the 7c+. To get more used to trad Climbing so that I wouldn't be completely stuck with nuts and friends in Wales during the WICM (Women's Internation Climbers Meet, more about it below), I made two trips to Ettringen. One with Ibex, which was great to practise trad Climbing again, and one trip with Harald and Kees. Although Harald and Kees both have children, they keep on Climbing hard stuff, I really have a lot of respect for these two men! Although it has been raining all night, we found a piece of rock that was dry enough to climb on. After Climbing several routes, my eye fell on a beautifull small fingercrack, with left of it an arrete. Harald saw the beauty of it as well, and immediately made it a toprope. After seeing him trying, I tried one time on toprope as well. After working it out one time, the movements felt solid and I decided to give it a go on the lead. Having all my trust in my shoes standing on pretty much nothing in the first half of the route(without advertising, this is why I really love the trust that the Anasazi wms shoes give me) and with some nerves in the second half of the route, I topped it! Dance2techno, my first 7c trad! Later it turned out to be the second free ascent of the route, and the first female ascent. Amazing :D

Being creative with nuts in Ettringen.

With a 7c trad in my pocket I went with some more trust in trad Climbing to the WICM in Wales: a week-long trad Climbing meet with only women from all around the world. The meet took place in Llanberis, Wales (UK). After arriving Sunday early morning, I drove together with someone from Lutvia and a Brittish host climber to the hut in the Llanberis pass. There we met two other early birds: Francie from Germany and Chloe from Ireland. There were also some more host climbers and seeing the rocks outside, we decided to get out and get Climbing. Together with Chloe I climbed a nice 3 pitches long route. At the end of the route we got to meet the typical Welsh weather: rain. Soaked we arrived back at the hut, in which in the meanwhile more women had arrived. The rest of the evening was full with having nice chats with everyone. The next days were filled with Climbing, Climbing and more Climbing. I climbed on seacliffs, climbed on the Slates, climbed in the pass, climbed in the rain, climbed in the Sunshine, did some bouldering, did some singlepitch, did lots of multipitch and all of this in trad. Got the chance to climb with amazing people, climbed classic lines and had tons of fun. On the last day I decided to give the famous route Strawberries a go (E7 6b), but not taking a proper look in the guidebook in advantage made me ending up in Dream Topping(E7 7a). Oops... Managed to make all moves but felt too tired to climb it in one go. All together, I fell in love with the trad Climbing in Wales and definetely want to go back there soon! Also, it was a great experience to climb with so many enthousiastic female climbers. It was an unforgettable week! A more detailed story will come later.

Trying hard in dream topping

The day before leaving to the UK was the second round of the National Lead Climbing competition. Curious about how strong everyone (including myself) would be, I went to Amsterdam. The routesetter made a lot of work of the routesetting, and the routes turned out to be very nice. The Climbing went well and together with Nikki I topped both qualifications. The final route looked harder, but followed a nice line through the overhang. A far dynamic movement pushed me out of my comfort zone, which made holding it giving a great feeling. Forgetting to clip quickdraws costed more strength than necessary and being pumped I fell out the route when I was in the roof. Nikki managed to climb 7 moves further, which made her the winner of that day, me second and Lynn (falling 8 hold below me) 3rd.


At the beginning of the final route

So, what is next? The summer holidays are almost there, meaning time for a trip to the Frankenjura again, doing alpine, trad and sports Climbing in the Alps and maybe a visit to Wales. For this moment I am desperately writing a thesis proposal and looking forward to the summer holidays!

NSK Lead 2016

Last Saturday the Climbing students were competing with and against each other to fight out who would be crowned for the best male and female student climber of the Netherlands! Besides this it is also every year a big competition which SAC has the strongest climbers. The last few years the GSAC (Groningen Student Alpine Club) took that price but I hoped that this year Ibex was ready to take it over. There also were some side-events like blind Climbing, dyno contest, deadhang contest and topo guess contest.

Being together with 99 other students makes this competition one of the best of the year: having fun is most important, besides Climbing and the big party afterwards. The qualification round existed of about 20 routes of all different levels so that everyone can climb at his/her maximum. The routes were fun and diverse, even as the side events. Iris Straatsma was besides my biggest concurrent also my buddy and together we won the blind Climbing side event: I was Climbing blinded and Iris gave the perfect tips to reach the top as fast as possible. Together we ended up with the highest score in the qualification round, and also the final didn't made a distinction between us because we both topped the route. So the final was promised to be exciting!

The route looked very nice, many big (but bad?) holds, small crimps and all holds visually very nice positioned. Psyched to climb it! The waiting in the isolation (I had to climb last) didn't took long, which made me quite nervous: why was everyone falling so fast? Then it was already my turn to climb. The beginning went easy, some nice balancy shoulder moves and then from a big donut hold to another, even bigger, donut hold. Ouch, the first one was a sloper. And where were the footholds? I began to understand why the others fell so early. I hesitated, chalked my hands, hesitated again, putted my feet completely to the left and then went for the next donut. Ouch, also a sloper! Sometimes Climbing is easy: just hold on. So I did, fighting my way up the route. I loved the movements, I loved getting pumped and being able to shake it away, I loved the small crimps at the end of the route which were just big enough to hold on to even while being pumped and I loved the public going crazy after topping the route. Yeahh! Dutch Student Champion 2016!

Picture made by Menno Visser

Pieter van Loon, my training partner last year, did a perfect performance during the semi finals: Climbing in his pyjama he reached the top of the semi final. I really hoped he would do the same in the final so that we would become both Dutch Student Champion. The men's final was tough, very tough but Pieter showed his strength and managed to climb further than all other men and also crowned himself as Dutch Student Champion 2016!

But the competition was not completely over yet: in order to get our flag back, we (the ibex board) had to perform a dance act, even as the ESAC and the TSAC. The one who had the best performance, got their flag back. We choosed the number deceptacon - le tigre, and did the associated dance. Thanks to our secret dancing talents we won and got our flag back! Unfortunately we didn't managed to steal theirs, this honour is for the ZeeSAC.

All together it was a great event!

Nederlands Ruigste

Nederlands Ruigste (Dutch toughest) is a television programme in which they look for the strongest Dutch man and woman. In the quest to find this, two events are being organised: one trial event and one final event. The trial event took place last weekend in Flevonice. All participants from 10 categories had to run through an obstacle parcour of 7km. The best five men and women of each category made it to the final event, which will take place April the 16th in the Olympic Stadium (Amsterdam).

(Rock) Climbers was one of the categories and I signed up for participating for this event. After all: it was a cheap opportunity for doing an obstacle run and I was curious about the programme. Unfortunately not many other climbers showed up, so we were at the start with only 6 woman and about 12 men. I had no clue about my condition, my physical abilities, the parcour, nothing. I decided to just enjoy and see what will happen.

The race started with 2.5 km running while carrying a sandbag. The first two km where easy, I had a nice cadense and was in a good running flow. The weather was just perfect: cloudy, not too warm, not too cold, no rain and no strong wind. The last half a kilometer the sandbag was annoying me and I was happy when I got rid of it. Then the obstacle parcour started: running/walking/swimming (a combination of this) through ditches, Climbing and jumping over walls, traversing monkey bars, crawling through mud. It was diverse and continuing the flow I came in during running I didn't found much trouble overcoming the obstacles. Then you had to swim in the water. The water in the lake was 6 degrees and several people already had to stop the race due to undercooling. Feeling still quite fresh I thought it wouldn't be that bad. I dived into to water and indeed, the water was not that cold. Probably the others were just pussy's. I swam and swam and slowed down more and more. Damn, this water is cold! Damn, the shore opposite doesn't seems to get closer... Damn, I am not a wimp, am I? I continued swimming and after for what felt like ages I reached the shore opposite. Yeah! The running continued, first with stiff legs, later easier again. Some more obstacles and the finish was almost there. Then: there was a halfpipe. Already muddy and slippery from the categories before us. You had to run, grap the edge and pull yourself on it. Nooo! Being small, tired and having slippery mud everywhere I already doomed this last obstacle when seeing it. I tried and failed, didn't even come close. Tried again and failed again, not getting closer. Tried another time, almost reached it now! This gave hope and the forth time I managed! Yes! Continued to the finish and made it to the finals!

The finals are Saturday the 16th of April in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. I have 4 tickets to give away so if you want to be there and support me, please let me know!

Dutch Championships Iceclimbing

Yes, you read it correctly: Dutch Championships Iceclimbing!
Without mountains, waterfalls or ice but with a nice drytooling wall at the Uithof in Utrecht the first Dutch Championships iceclimbing were hold. Differently then with the Drytool event, Dennis and Marianne (the Dutch iceclimbing team) competed at this championship. Good concurrention!

After being in Nepal for about 7 weeks (another blogpost about this period is coming) I lost quite some strength and didn't had a good chance to train for this championship. I was curious on how the drytooling would feel like. Together with Noel I went to the Uithof, arriving there we immediately had to go into the isolation. After waiting for some time we were allowed to watch the route for 4 minutes. The routes didn't looked too hard, starting with a big piece of wood and then continuing on small crimpy holds, before reaching another woorden block. From there a few moves until an undercling from where you had to go into the roof. The roof existed of 2 big wooden icicles and 1 big horizontal "surfboard". It looked like a cool route and I really hoped to be able to reach the roof and show some figure of 4's / figure of 9's.

Finished looking at the route, we had to wait for a long time. Fortunately there was a small heater in the isolation, as the outside temperature was around 0 degrees. After some time we did some warming up and then it finally was my turn to climb. The first wooden block was harder and more difficult than I expected. Trying not to spend too much time on it I didn't hit my iceaxe into it deep enough which caused a fall. Fortunately you had a restart when falling before the first quickdraw so I jumped into the routes again, made sure, double checked and made sure again that my iceaxes were deep enough in the wood and then continued climbing fast on the crimpy holds. The second wooden block was softer and therefore easier. Rushing through the route and trying to climb and clip the quickdraws as soon as possible I made another mistake costing me costly time: a Z-clip. I repared it and rushed further, reaching the roof with not much more time left on the clock. Made a figure of four, figure of nine, worked myself up on te big wooden icicle and then run out of time. Not really pumped yet but certainly satisfied with my attempt.

Marianne did some perfect time management and showed everyone how to climb the final route, finishing it in the very last seconds.
In the mens route Dennis almost made it to a top, having clipped the last quickdraw but missed the last tophold with two iceaxes. Good enough for him to take the first place!

The first National champions iceclimbing are Marianne van der Steen and Dennis van Hoek, Ferdinand Schulte and me are very happy runners up.