Almost 14 years ago Dennis took me to Kandersteg for the first time. It was winter, we just finished my first Worldcup in Saas Fee and Valle Daone. It was his 4th Worldcup Season.
He told me I should climb that route. Pink Panther, M9.
It took me ages. It took me forty-five minutes to climb the 20-ish meter route. Dennis was freezing his ass off, he complained afterwards and told everyone how crazy this was. But he belayed me. He stood there, had the patience. And the knowledge. Because he knew this was a hard route (at that time). A milestone.
Meanwhile we’re married. Have three dachshunds. Build our own house. And still travel together. Climbed all kinds of big routes, mostly together with Dennis. From Flying Circus on the Breitwangflue in Switzerland, Eiger North Face, new sports climbs in China, Moonflower Buttress (Alaska), new Alpine routes in India, to Lipton in Norway and most things in the cave I’ll tell you about now.
I found this stamina thing. Inspired by Tom Ballard, who opened this route and two strong women who climbed it (besides a bunch of strong men). Angelika set a big milestone in 2017, Haruko repeated it this August 2023.
It’s not Dennis’ thing. He’s tall, loves the longer, like 25m, crux bouldery routes, not the forever long routes. But he’s here, he’ll belay me and give it a try himself.
After climbing a few fun multipitch rock climbs and a few MTB tours we went to the cave. Tomorrow’s World Tom has called the area just at the Fedaia Pass in the Belluno part of the Italian Dolomites.
Just below the cave there’s a popular sports climbing area but the cave was untouched. For sportsclimbing it’s not a really attractive thing. Lots of loose rock, wet dripping patches and crumby clay sections with a huge avalanche danger in winter time and daily rock fall on the approach in summer. Though, it’s so big that it looks more like a multipitch roof like in Getu Valley, China instead of a single pitch thing.
Tom started gentle with one route. But soon created more and bigger and longer. Till the cave had basically everything from D9 to D14 and then…he linked up this thing: A Line above the Sky. And that’s what it looks like when you have a view from the inside of the cave to the roof that looks like it’s above the skyline of the cliff on the other side of the valley.
Tom used whatever he had. He manufactured bent pieces of steel in his shed to use as hangers on the bolts. They look rusty but most are thick and sturdy. Once after we spent a day with Tom in his cave we decided to collect everything we had and donate it to him. Bolts, hangers, draws, slings… A year later he opened a new route. A D10 and I had the honour of climbing it. Cause it was our gear. I felt insanely privileged on him allowing me to onsight the route and claim the first ascent.
Tom meant a lot for the community and was visionary in his climbing. And besides that a funny and friendly person. It’s sad he’s not with us anymore.
Walking up to the cliff avoiding to step on these flowers
Day 1.
We had our campervan parked up at the pass and took our bikes to cycle down. A nice warm-up and a fun run for the dogs. Our bags on the bike were heavy. Two ropes, warmer gear, enough water, draws etc. It was harder than I anticipated to get down the steep grass of the ski slope.
We parked our bikes and repacked our gear in our bags, passed the people at the sportsclimbing area. They all looked at us: what were those two going to do? We already had our helmets on because of the potential rockfall.
On the approach we tried to avoid the Marmots (the dogs love them a little too much) and avoid stepping on the Edelweiss flowers.
We sat down and looked at the cliff. After a few years of absence I totally forgot where the line even went! I literally needed the topo to take a look.
There’s also a new line, supposed to be even harder, D16 by Darek Skolowski. It starts even more to the left, traverses higher and ends slightly lower and further to the right. It’s a little confusing at the end as it crosses the line I focused on.
I just started. See where I’d end up.
Slowly I started to remember things. The light green marked footholds, the crayon marked axe placements, and oh yes that insanely long move I could not reach with a figure of four. But not all felt the same, hard to determine what was different after too many years.
Some draws were different for sure. Most of our Edelrid draws were gone in the cave and sometimes replaced with knotted slings.
Things change over time. That’s what happens when rock is loose and you use iceaxes. Most holds are natural but some seem like drilled pockets, although I’m not sure Tom created those. Some moves seem longer than I remembered, more climbing in loops going down and up again like in a clock, some seem shorter, where maybe a foothold is now a okay axe placement too.
Going through the route, using a wax crayon to mark all the axe placements in one single colour (most were marked blue now so I used blue crayon but when I tried it first all was marked with orange and some pink and red crayon).
When I reached the end I’d done all the moves but found the clock sequence in the middle and the super long move past the middle from the wet steinpull to the other wet hold really difficult. Not sure if I could do those in a whole sequence.
Dennis tried. Re-marked some more holds that I apparently missed making sure the whole route was visible.
We ate some, called a friend and rested, watching the valley below buzz with cars, bikes, motorcycles and an occasional hiker.
The cliff as seen from the other side of the valley.
The cave is in the shade, north facing so we did not really enjoy the sunny weather and kind of regretted not hanging in a beautiful Dolomite limestone multipitch somewhere on the other side of this Marmolada cliff. I still have Weg durch den Fisch high on my wish list for example.
And so I tried again. Still enough energy and power in my body after the work we did earlier. But my gloves were worn out, the tape on my axes even more worn out and I did feel the altitude. Coming from a country that lays below sea level this is altitude. Just eight (of 25) QuickDraws short of the finish I could no longer hold on and asked Dennis to take in the rope.
It felt still super long to reach that final hold over the lip…clip after clip, sitting in the rope I finally finished the route. Not at all satisfied with my attempt but no more skin or energy left for another try.
I need new gloves…
We decided to take two days off from climbing. Took our mountainbike and cycled a long round following the cliff on the other side of the valley. It was quite technical but just what we wanted and it resulted in a magnificent picture of the cliff we were climbing on.
Then a rainy day and rest day. A hike, a swim in the lake and some laptop work I was already a week behind on.
My skin healed fast my SpO2 level and sleep didn’t. Not yet. But I should at least give it a try.
So I went again. With no expectations I even reached six draws before the end. I almost lost my axe trying to pull the rope up to clip, twisted slipped off with my worn out gloves and shitty tape and fell. I was so disappointed but after pulling up the rope again I managed to finish the route. One fall.
It gave me so much hope. Maybe, maybe I can actually do this! I didn’t have enough skin and energy to go once more on this day. It took me 45 minutes to reach the end.
Hanging around to find out the moves…
The SpO2, my lack of good sleep, and the need of new tape and gloves made us decide to drive down. At Belluno there were bigger shops ánd another drytooling cliff (by Matteo Pilon) Maybe it’d be good training to go there for a day or two instead.
We met with Dennis parents who are on their journey through Italy and I could do fresh tape on my axes. Unfortunately no new gloves available in the shops. But a nice tourist walk around town. And ice cream! This area is know for it’s excellent real Italian ice cream.
Finding our way in the big D15 above Belluno
The training turned into a lot of walking because we missed the exit to the cave and couldn’t figure out the moves in one go on the D15. With no daylight left and too tired to go again we decided to go for an MTB ride the next day and find even better icecream higher up back in the Dolomites.
We drove on, filled up water, fuel and arrived back at the lake around midday. We went for a great rock route on the Sasso delle Undici just next to where we were parked. A great climb with an adventurous aspect. It blew my mind finding bullets and other very old remains of the First World War over a hundred years ago. This mountain was the border between the former Austrian empire and Italy. They fought heavily here, the Austrians hiding in the Marmolada glacier, the Italians continuously bombing this cliff. There’s still shrapnel everywhere…
The next day another test day and hoping my fitness would have increased. It was. Significantly. My SpO2 was better, my sleep felt better, my arms felt stronger but my mind…!
Yet another attempt. New tape, new axes, fresh on everything.
I try the route in so called ‘comp style’ and not drytool style [DTS] or alpine style. So I wear gloves, I wear lightweight shoes with fixed full front crampons, Scarpa Rebel Ice, just like Tom, a helmet, and I use figure-of-four (and nine) moves. Though I did not use competition iceaxes. I use the axes with normal mixed picks instead of the super aggressive comp picks. The tools are not elongated and don’t have extra long handles either. The route was made using Cassin X-Dream axes, I used IceRock ASpeed tools with Steinle picks.
Originally Tom climbed the route without the use of figure of fours. The climber who did the first repeat (Gaetan Raymond) also didn’t use figure-of-fours. Alpine style would be with alpine boots and separate crampons. There are also climbers who appraoch the drytooling even more like sportsclimbing and don’t even use boots with crampons but sportsclimbing shoes (such as the first ascensionist of Pray for Power) don’t wear gloves, have a chalkbag and often don’t even wear a helmet, often this is a blend of the DTS style where no figure of four moves are used.
A picture Tom took of us whilst climbing together in 2017 (?) I tried and/or climbed most routes in DTS style
I try to use as little figure of fours in my routes as possible. Try to do the routes that are in areas like Usine (France) or Plombière (France) without figure of fours as that is the ‘ethic’ requested by the ones who opened the routes. Also here, I try (and climbed) most routes without the use of figure of fours.
Though as a woman I’m build different. I have hips and hip flexibility, naturally. I also have less core strength. Naturally. It’s part of our wiring on being a woman. Recently a blood test gave a surprising result, even for a woman I have quite a lot of female hormones. It causes all kinds of issues not really helping me to build muscle for example and big emotional fluctuations, I need to train really, really hard to get those power things. So basically as a woman it’s easier doing figure of fours. It’s an advantage to be a woman maybe.
Meanwhile I kept on thinking, also partially caused by the higher amount of hormones: what if I actually climb this. Oh my god I think I can do this. I want to. But at the same time my mind was insecure and full with everything that could go wrong. What if I break my axe, what if I get injured, what if nobody believes me, what if I still don’t climb it, what if I’m actually getting weaker because I’m not training so much, what if…! Everything…!
We drive down and I swung my bag on my back. And threw up my whole breakfast.
I didn’t even dare to tell Dennis. The more I expressed my thoughts, I thought, the more they had the possibility to become real. I knew all those thoughts were nonsense but my kind kept on creating new thoughts again and again.
So nervous I constantly have to yawn
It’s something I always find hard. On comps I have this too. I used to be so nervous I’d throw up before a comp. It’s getting better. Up to this day where I had a 10-year set back. Why? In short; Because I never thought I’d get this far, never believed I could do this and the perfectionist in me wants to have everything perfect to not blew it. And things are never perfect. So that makes me super insecure. Every little detail then grows to something impossible in my mind. The mind that’s working over hours day and night. I know I shouldn’t. Tell myself to shut up and be normal. Just fuckin shut up. Mostly it works. But not today.
I swung my arms. Did some pull-ups, some flexibility stuff and was wondering how much more I should do after the walk and ride.
I just decided I should go.
And went. Move after move after move. Slowly I figured out I could actually recover after doing some longer moves. I gained my breathe again. Gained strength again. And went on. Past the clock climb, beyond the steinpull, just two, two more clips to go! And then my foot slipped, and hung on my axe and slipped off. Nooooo!
Totally drained, out of energy and my mind lower than low I came down.
You see, I can’t do it.
I felt devastated, I lost.
After half a day of clouds in my mind, some sleep and some food I functioned again.
Let’s do this the way we always do.
celebrating before a big event
The way we appraoch any big climb, any comp: we celebrate beforehand. And then have a more positive mindset. And then just see whatever happens. And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. The route is not going to run away. And we still have time. And can always come back another day.
Since we were in Starzlachklamm a few weeks earlier I wanted Kaiserschmarren; a local dish that can maybe best described as scrambled egg-pancake with powder sugar and jam. So we ordered that at a local restaurant. And we just sat. We were even surprised afterward as we paid just €15,- for us both! Every penny counts as we don’t have full time jobs, don’t have financial sponsors and only low pay jobs mostly. It was our own idea to save a bit, drive here and climb. Nobody initiated or financed us to be here or suggested me to climb this. It’s just me and my thing.
With the change of scenery from our campervan, the nice dish instead of cooking cheap meals, and stories to be seen in the restaurant from WW1 relics to climbing gear and okay old rock music radio. We both felt better.
It also helped that Dennis fixed the van (just regular maintenance but still :)
With only a slightly nervous mind (we both were mega awake around 04:00 in the night discussing the use of pitons on climbs in the Dolomites) we went for an early start.
And this time. I didn’t rush in the middle, stayed focused in the end, rested enough on the bigger holds, and with just a tiny shaky arm I could clip that very, very last draw, and screamed: jaaaaaa, jāāā, jâ!!! I did it! In in total six attempts in just 30 minutes of climbing, more than 25 quickdraws, I climbed A Line above the Sky.
The grade D15 is one of the hardest in the world. By length it’s most definitely the hardest route I ever climbed. There are (for my feeling) three sections that would make the route at least a D14 (if I compare the route to other established D14’s such as Robert Jasper’s Iron Man) the length, the stamina needed to finish the route would give it at least a big plus up the D14 gradeto my opinion. It’s also significantly harder than some D14 and a supposedly D15 in Vail, Colorado. I’ve never tried a D16 so I don’t know how this route is compared to what is supposed to be even harder.
I’m from a country that doesn’t even have mountains. Where I have to explain every week what I actually do and the first thing people say: oh that’s dangerous, would you like to die or so? And they’ll ask when I will quit and start a family because ‘time is ticking’ and I only have a year or so (I’m 39).
It’s only thanks to Dennis, my husband that we can both live the live we have now. Travel and care for each other, understand what we do, make plans, live our own dreams. It’s fantastic to have people that inspire me, thanks once again Tom, wherever you are, for what you created in this cave. Thanks for the journey. Who knows where this will end.
Now we need to drive back home. Teach rock climbing for a few days in Ettringen, Germany and start building our annual Dutch Drytool Event on the outer walls of our home gym. And then real winter starts full of comps and real ice. If this is just the start of the season, I can’t wait to see where the rest of the season will take me!
A line above the sky
Almost 14 years ago Dennis took me to Kandersteg for the first time. It was winter, we just finished my first Worldcup in Saas Fee and Valle Daone. It was his 4th Worldcup Season.
He told me I should climb that route. Pink Panther, M9.
It took me ages. It took me forty-five minutes to climb the 20-ish meter route. Dennis was freezing his ass off, he complained afterwards and told everyone how crazy this was. But he belayed me. He stood there, had the patience. And the knowledge. Because he knew this was a hard route (at that time). A milestone.
Meanwhile we’re married. Have three dachshunds. Build our own house. And still travel together. Climbed all kinds of big routes, mostly together with Dennis. From Flying Circus on the Breitwangflue in Switzerland, Eiger North Face, new sports climbs in China, Moonflower Buttress (Alaska), new Alpine routes in India, to Lipton in Norway and most things in the cave I’ll tell you about now.
I found this stamina thing. Inspired by Tom Ballard, who opened this route and two strong women who climbed it (besides a bunch of strong men). Angelika set a big milestone in 2017, Haruko repeated it this August 2023.
It’s not Dennis’ thing. He’s tall, loves the longer, like 25m, crux bouldery routes, not the forever long routes. But he’s here, he’ll belay me and give it a try himself.
After climbing a few fun multipitch rock climbs and a few MTB tours we went to the cave. Tomorrow’s World Tom has called the area just at the Fedaia Pass in the Belluno part of the Italian Dolomites.
Just below the cave there’s a popular sports climbing area but the cave was untouched. For sportsclimbing it’s not a really attractive thing. Lots of loose rock, wet dripping patches and crumby clay sections with a huge avalanche danger in winter time and daily rock fall on the approach in summer. Though, it’s so big that it looks more like a multipitch roof like in Getu Valley, China instead of a single pitch thing.
Tom started gentle with one route. But soon created more and bigger and longer. Till the cave had basically everything from D9 to D14 and then…he linked up this thing: A Line above the Sky. And that’s what it looks like when you have a view from the inside of the cave to the roof that looks like it’s above the skyline of the cliff on the other side of the valley.
Tom used whatever he had. He manufactured bent pieces of steel in his shed to use as hangers on the bolts. They look rusty but most are thick and sturdy. Once after we spent a day with Tom in his cave we decided to collect everything we had and donate it to him. Bolts, hangers, draws, slings… A year later he opened a new route. A D10 and I had the honour of climbing it. Cause it was our gear. I felt insanely privileged on him allowing me to onsight the route and claim the first ascent.
Tom meant a lot for the community and was visionary in his climbing. And besides that a funny and friendly person. It’s sad he’s not with us anymore.
Day 1.
We had our campervan parked up at the pass and took our bikes to cycle down. A nice warm-up and a fun run for the dogs. Our bags on the bike were heavy. Two ropes, warmer gear, enough water, draws etc. It was harder than I anticipated to get down the steep grass of the ski slope.
We parked our bikes and repacked our gear in our bags, passed the people at the sportsclimbing area. They all looked at us: what were those two going to do? We already had our helmets on because of the potential rockfall.
On the approach we tried to avoid the Marmots (the dogs love them a little too much) and avoid stepping on the Edelweiss flowers.
We sat down and looked at the cliff. After a few years of absence I totally forgot where the line even went! I literally needed the topo to take a look.
There’s also a new line, supposed to be even harder, D16 by Darek Skolowski. It starts even more to the left, traverses higher and ends slightly lower and further to the right. It’s a little confusing at the end as it crosses the line I focused on.
I just started. See where I’d end up.
Slowly I started to remember things. The light green marked footholds, the crayon marked axe placements, and oh yes that insanely long move I could not reach with a figure of four. But not all felt the same, hard to determine what was different after too many years.
Some draws were different for sure. Most of our Edelrid draws were gone in the cave and sometimes replaced with knotted slings.
Things change over time. That’s what happens when rock is loose and you use iceaxes. Most holds are natural but some seem like drilled pockets, although I’m not sure Tom created those. Some moves seem longer than I remembered, more climbing in loops going down and up again like in a clock, some seem shorter, where maybe a foothold is now a okay axe placement too.
Going through the route, using a wax crayon to mark all the axe placements in one single colour (most were marked blue now so I used blue crayon but when I tried it first all was marked with orange and some pink and red crayon).
When I reached the end I’d done all the moves but found the clock sequence in the middle and the super long move past the middle from the wet steinpull to the other wet hold really difficult. Not sure if I could do those in a whole sequence.
Dennis tried. Re-marked some more holds that I apparently missed making sure the whole route was visible.
We ate some, called a friend and rested, watching the valley below buzz with cars, bikes, motorcycles and an occasional hiker.
The cave is in the shade, north facing so we did not really enjoy the sunny weather and kind of regretted not hanging in a beautiful Dolomite limestone multipitch somewhere on the other side of this Marmolada cliff. I still have Weg durch den Fisch high on my wish list for example.
And so I tried again. Still enough energy and power in my body after the work we did earlier. But my gloves were worn out, the tape on my axes even more worn out and I did feel the altitude. Coming from a country that lays below sea level this is altitude. Just eight (of 25) QuickDraws short of the finish I could no longer hold on and asked Dennis to take in the rope.
It felt still super long to reach that final hold over the lip…clip after clip, sitting in the rope I finally finished the route. Not at all satisfied with my attempt but no more skin or energy left for another try.
We decided to take two days off from climbing. Took our mountainbike and cycled a long round following the cliff on the other side of the valley. It was quite technical but just what we wanted and it resulted in a magnificent picture of the cliff we were climbing on.
Then a rainy day and rest day. A hike, a swim in the lake and some laptop work I was already a week behind on.
My skin healed fast my SpO2 level and sleep didn’t. Not yet. But I should at least give it a try.
So I went again. With no expectations I even reached six draws before the end. I almost lost my axe trying to pull the rope up to clip, twisted slipped off with my worn out gloves and shitty tape and fell. I was so disappointed but after pulling up the rope again I managed to finish the route. One fall.
It gave me so much hope. Maybe, maybe I can actually do this! I didn’t have enough skin and energy to go once more on this day. It took me 45 minutes to reach the end.
The SpO2, my lack of good sleep, and the need of new tape and gloves made us decide to drive down. At Belluno there were bigger shops ánd another drytooling cliff (by Matteo Pilon) Maybe it’d be good training to go there for a day or two instead.
We met with Dennis parents who are on their journey through Italy and I could do fresh tape on my axes. Unfortunately no new gloves available in the shops. But a nice tourist walk around town. And ice cream! This area is know for it’s excellent real Italian ice cream.
The training turned into a lot of walking because we missed the exit to the cave and couldn’t figure out the moves in one go on the D15. With no daylight left and too tired to go again we decided to go for an MTB ride the next day and find even better icecream higher up back in the Dolomites.
We drove on, filled up water, fuel and arrived back at the lake around midday. We went for a great rock route on the Sasso delle Undici just next to where we were parked. A great climb with an adventurous aspect. It blew my mind finding bullets and other very old remains of the First World War over a hundred years ago. This mountain was the border between the former Austrian empire and Italy. They fought heavily here, the Austrians hiding in the Marmolada glacier, the Italians continuously bombing this cliff. There’s still shrapnel everywhere…
The next day another test day and hoping my fitness would have increased. It was. Significantly. My SpO2 was better, my sleep felt better, my arms felt stronger but my mind…!
Yet another attempt. New tape, new axes, fresh on everything.
I try the route in so called ‘comp style’ and not drytool style [DTS] or alpine style. So I wear gloves, I wear lightweight shoes with fixed full front crampons, Scarpa Rebel Ice, just like Tom, a helmet, and I use figure-of-four (and nine) moves. Though I did not use competition iceaxes. I use the axes with normal mixed picks instead of the super aggressive comp picks. The tools are not elongated and don’t have extra long handles either. The route was made using Cassin X-Dream axes, I used IceRock ASpeed tools with Steinle picks.
Originally Tom climbed the route without the use of figure of fours. The climber who did the first repeat (Gaetan Raymond) also didn’t use figure-of-fours. Alpine style would be with alpine boots and separate crampons. There are also climbers who appraoch the drytooling even more like sportsclimbing and don’t even use boots with crampons but sportsclimbing shoes (such as the first ascensionist of Pray for Power) don’t wear gloves, have a chalkbag and often don’t even wear a helmet, often this is a blend of the DTS style where no figure of four moves are used.
I try to use as little figure of fours in my routes as possible. Try to do the routes that are in areas like Usine (France) or Plombière (France) without figure of fours as that is the ‘ethic’ requested by the ones who opened the routes. Also here, I try (and climbed) most routes without the use of figure of fours.
Though as a woman I’m build different. I have hips and hip flexibility, naturally. I also have less core strength. Naturally. It’s part of our wiring on being a woman. Recently a blood test gave a surprising result, even for a woman I have quite a lot of female hormones. It causes all kinds of issues not really helping me to build muscle for example and big emotional fluctuations, I need to train really, really hard to get those power things. So basically as a woman it’s easier doing figure of fours. It’s an advantage to be a woman maybe.
Meanwhile I kept on thinking, also partially caused by the higher amount of hormones: what if I actually climb this. Oh my god I think I can do this. I want to. But at the same time my mind was insecure and full with everything that could go wrong. What if I break my axe, what if I get injured, what if nobody believes me, what if I still don’t climb it, what if I’m actually getting weaker because I’m not training so much, what if…! Everything…!
We drive down and I swung my bag on my back. And threw up my whole breakfast.
I didn’t even dare to tell Dennis. The more I expressed my thoughts, I thought, the more they had the possibility to become real. I knew all those thoughts were nonsense but my kind kept on creating new thoughts again and again.
It’s something I always find hard. On comps I have this too. I used to be so nervous I’d throw up before a comp. It’s getting better. Up to this day where I had a 10-year set back. Why? In short; Because I never thought I’d get this far, never believed I could do this and the perfectionist in me wants to have everything perfect to not blew it. And things are never perfect. So that makes me super insecure. Every little detail then grows to something impossible in my mind. The mind that’s working over hours day and night. I know I shouldn’t. Tell myself to shut up and be normal. Just fuckin shut up. Mostly it works. But not today.
I swung my arms. Did some pull-ups, some flexibility stuff and was wondering how much more I should do after the walk and ride.
I just decided I should go.
And went. Move after move after move. Slowly I figured out I could actually recover after doing some longer moves. I gained my breathe again. Gained strength again. And went on. Past the clock climb, beyond the steinpull, just two, two more clips to go! And then my foot slipped, and hung on my axe and slipped off. Nooooo!
Totally drained, out of energy and my mind lower than low I came down.
You see, I can’t do it.
I felt devastated, I lost.
After half a day of clouds in my mind, some sleep and some food I functioned again.
Let’s do this the way we always do.
The way we appraoch any big climb, any comp: we celebrate beforehand. And then have a more positive mindset. And then just see whatever happens. And if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t. The route is not going to run away. And we still have time. And can always come back another day.
Since we were in Starzlachklamm a few weeks earlier I wanted Kaiserschmarren; a local dish that can maybe best described as scrambled egg-pancake with powder sugar and jam. So we ordered that at a local restaurant. And we just sat. We were even surprised afterward as we paid just €15,- for us both! Every penny counts as we don’t have full time jobs, don’t have financial sponsors and only low pay jobs mostly. It was our own idea to save a bit, drive here and climb. Nobody initiated or financed us to be here or suggested me to climb this. It’s just me and my thing.
With the change of scenery from our campervan, the nice dish instead of cooking cheap meals, and stories to be seen in the restaurant from WW1 relics to climbing gear and okay old rock music radio. We both felt better.
With only a slightly nervous mind (we both were mega awake around 04:00 in the night discussing the use of pitons on climbs in the Dolomites) we went for an early start.
And this time. I didn’t rush in the middle, stayed focused in the end, rested enough on the bigger holds, and with just a tiny shaky arm I could clip that very, very last draw, and screamed: jaaaaaa, jāāā, jâ!!! I did it! In in total six attempts in just 30 minutes of climbing, more than 25 quickdraws, I climbed A Line above the Sky.
The grade D15 is one of the hardest in the world. By length it’s most definitely the hardest route I ever climbed. There are (for my feeling) three sections that would make the route at least a D14 (if I compare the route to other established D14’s such as Robert Jasper’s Iron Man) the length, the stamina needed to finish the route would give it at least a big plus up the D14 gradeto my opinion. It’s also significantly harder than some D14 and a supposedly D15 in Vail, Colorado. I’ve never tried a D16 so I don’t know how this route is compared to what is supposed to be even harder.
I’m from a country that doesn’t even have mountains. Where I have to explain every week what I actually do and the first thing people say: oh that’s dangerous, would you like to die or so? And they’ll ask when I will quit and start a family because ‘time is ticking’ and I only have a year or so (I’m 39).
It’s only thanks to Dennis, my husband that we can both live the live we have now. Travel and care for each other, understand what we do, make plans, live our own dreams. It’s fantastic to have people that inspire me, thanks once again Tom, wherever you are, for what you created in this cave. Thanks for the journey. Who knows where this will end.
Now we need to drive back home. Teach rock climbing for a few days in Ettringen, Germany and start building our annual Dutch Drytool Event on the outer walls of our home gym. And then real winter starts full of comps and real ice. If this is just the start of the season, I can’t wait to see where the rest of the season will take me!