Loads of fireworks, friends, champaign, beer and Oliebollen.(Dutch style 8-12cm bread balls, often with raisins and/or Apple, baked in oil we only eat those things with new years’s.)
We’ve wished everyone a good new year and quietly I wish this year will bring me a little more compared to 2015.
The deaths of four friends, no job, no house, bad luck in climbing, the short life of our little dog Getu, and some more unfortunate experiences didn’t make it the year I hoped for…
We decided to leave this year behind and start the new good. Celebrating with friends till 02:30 and then: drive to the mountains. The landscape we love.
We wanted to experience a little bit of different climbing compared to all the routes we build on our home-wall. See what our actual level is like right now, see what we can do compared to others, see if we use the right grading for our routes, and just be with the two of us for a couple days.
Destination: Liechtenstein.
Of all places.
The Swiss have a Drytool competition series and on January 2. the series would take place in the small town of Malbun in Liechtenstein.
Liechtenstein. Cold :)
Liechtenstein is a small kingdom located between Austria, Swiss and Germany. Although they’re a tiny country they are independent. A small tax-haven for the rich and closely connected to the Swiss.
Extremely nationalistic. We personally didn’t experience this much. To us they were friendly and surprisingly open. But some others we spoke did have quite some stories.
A Dutch-German couple living here told us about their children being bullied severely, they were all seen as foreigners, often completely ignored and excluded from any social happenings.
I can imagine it must be hard to live here when you’re not genuinely Liechtensteiner.
Though, as it’s such a small country you almost háve to be nationalistic into an extreme, to keep culture, traditions, language alive.
The best you can do is adapt…and that might be a hard thing to do (as I’ve experienced in other countries I lived.)
The Liechtensteiner Alpen Verein together with the Täli ski station had recently build a new ice-tower.
Three sides were constructed only for ice, one side hosted a proper +20m overhanging wall equipped for drytooling.
The season is too hot for any ice unfortunately but the Drytool tower provided us enough fun.
At the end they hung a few big blocks to simulate a long roof-climb.
The wall looks well constructed, clean and had the nice night-decoration of a colour-changing light over the whole length of the wall.
Pretty cool they have this here!
Silvan Schübach is the main organiser of the Swiss events, the main route setter and trainer of the National Swiss team.
The Swiss (also thanks to Ürs Stocker) do a fantastic job in constructing their team with as a result Worldcup winners and many different finalists in all iceclimbing disciplines.
We asked Silvan if we could join their event and he openly welcomed us.
Still tired from the driving (880km) and the New Years festivities we arrived at the start around 09:30 in the morning.
The 25CHF fee assures us a full day of climbing on the tower together with at about 30 other enthusiastic climbers we had to conquer 4 different routes.
All toprope varying from M4/5 up to M10. You only had four minutes to climb every route, making it more challenging.
Dennis performing something that can best described as “European eating with Chinese chopsticks”.
Petra (left) and me (right) on the qualification routes.
It was interesting to see the different climbing styles, different moves and different holds. Silvan and his team used holds we didn’t knew yet (from granite hold to brand new PU-holds from the brand Flat Holds). and made moves that are different compared to the moves we invented for ourselves on our home-wall.
The time-pressure made us just, just not finish the hardest route but still far good enough to reach the finals.
As event-organisers we also looked at other details. Things we noticed:
– no route grading beforehand
– music/talking during the whole event
– time limit on the routes
– free iceclimbing shoes for everyone to borrow from Lowa
– judges per route
– higher entrance fee (compared to the Dutch Drytool Event)
– tower specially designed for iceclimbing/drytooling
– easy access by car
– support from the local community
– prices from the sponsors (R’adys and Petzl)
– less strict safety rules but more awareness of safety issues by the participants
– participants even sleep in close-by hotels to be able to join the comp
– competition combined with a training session on the next day
– many volunteers (? or paid?) in ratio to the amount of participants (at least 15 helping hands full-time available, catering at the bar excluded).
Especially the possibility to borrow climbing shoes (so called fruitboots) was a good addition and made the event look more professional. After all, you climb quite a bit better on sharp fruitboots compared to alpine-boots with duo-point crampons…
But also the amount of help from the local community was something we could only dream of…
Smiley-helmets allowed :)
At the time the finals started the snow started too.
Big semi-wet flakes slowly dropped from the sky.
Luckily the wall was overhanging enough to not make it much of an issue during the climb.
Odin, our Doxie got enough attention during the day in the snow.
Dennis was ranked somewhere in the middle and climbed rapidly through the first section. His style clearly visible; knee-drops, long moves, rapid placements.
He stalled in the upper section just before the roof. Climbed on… But missed the obligatory clip!
I screamed at him: “clip, clip, clip!”
He seemed to ignore our guidance and climbed into the first barrel and clipped. That was too late, he had to climb back into the overhanging section, make all the moves again to make his moves count… The reason he clipped so late was his length, it was just easier to clip later he found… Climbing back down gets you pumped and with just six minutes climbing time he could no longer reach the top…
He fell just two moves before the final hold (where you unofficially had to climb on top of the structure and wave your axes above your head to ‘top’ the route).
Dennis moving fast though the moves.
I was as one of the last climbers on the list.
Our route was on granite holds till it joined the men’s route just before the roof.
Although I felt a little insecure on the holds I moved nice, it even felt easy and almost free of nervousness. I had no ‘imagination’ of winning (competing against a worldcup winner, boulder champion, a girl that has so much training and climbing experience on those holds, walls and comps…).
I swung my tool easily in the wood section. The place where so many of the men fell off, I was surprised by my good swing.
The girls could also use the top of the wood (skipping the swing-part as Petra did in her attempt). I just found it cool to swing my axes and see what I could do.
Just before the roof I struggled clipping the draw Dennis clipped too late, losing some energy.
I got pumped…, fiddling with my shoes around my axes, I must have looked a little ridiculous there.
Clearly lacking the experience of roof climbing and endless figure of fours (I’ve been climbing without figure of fours for a year now, going full ‘DTS-style’).
And then my axe got stuck. My nightmare from a few years ago on the Worldcup in Saas-Fee where my axe got stuck in an ice-barrel losing so much time with all the down-climbing to free my axe…
My time was running out. And I just reached the big block before the final barrel.
The roof-moves got me pumped :)
Training to be done: figure of fours, roof climbing, and speeding up (although that went already better compared to last year).
Dennis ended on a fifth place between all Swiss team members. I got on a second place, just behind Petra Klinger (who managed to reach the final barrel just when her time ran out). Sina Goetz got the third place.
Petzl and R’adys provided us with cool prizes (headlamps, hats, shirts where free to choose).
I chose a headlamp (never enough of those and a wool shirt from the Swiss outdoor-brand R’adys. Pretty nice clothing they have.
The blue shirt would do good as replacement to my current shirt full of holes, rips and fixes :)
Read about the event here (in German) http://www.vaterland.li/liechtenstein/sport/Lea-Beck-verpasst-das-Podest-ganz-knapp;art174,177292
Today (Sunday January 3.) we will climb on the structure and then drive to…? Not sure yet. Eptingen?
Having fun in the fresh snow between training sessions.
Odin swimming through the snow in his new warm jacket.
The days together, primitively in the small campervan are good. Simple, quiet, full of climbing.
A good start of the new year :)
> A day later we drove to Eptingen. Discovered a new drytool area close to Sargans (thanks to the Swiss) and I felt so, so, so good hanging on my tools!
The unusual destination: Liechtenstein
Holiday destination: Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein. Cold :)
Dennis performing something that can best described as “European eating with Chinese chopsticks”.
Petra (left) and me (right) on the qualification routes.
Smiley-helmets allowed :)
Odin, our Doxie got enough attention during the day in the snow.
Dennis moving fast though the moves.
The roof-moves got me pumped :)
Having fun in the fresh snow between training sessions.
Odin swimming through the snow in his new warm jacket.
> A day later we drove to Eptingen. Discovered a new drytool area close to Sargans (thanks to the Swiss) and I felt so, so, so good hanging on my tools!
Eptingen roof climbing. Love it!
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