June 22

Today we climbed in Magic Wood again, and it was COLD. It was Krissy’s first day after taking a few days off. Things went much better for her today than the last time she tried to climb in Magic Wood. It is easy to get intimidated here - the problems are hard and the landings are scary.

We woke up and got going fairly early as we both had a few projects to work on. Krissy completed a few warm-ups and then got to work on a crimpy traverse type problem called Kanonarohr (6B). She finished it off in a couple of tries. Then she climbed two really tall problems in the 6A-6C range. After this it was of to the Camel Bloc to try Krissy’s project from a couple of days ago. Krissy managed to climb Big Cheese (6C) after a few goes. We then moved on to a problem called Red Roses (7B), and Krissy started working it. After a few attempts and one big blow off it was time for her to call it a day.



After Krissy was done climbing I started. We went to a problem called Octopussy (8A). I warmed-up on the last few moves and then managed to climb it on my third attempt. Then we headed down the valley to Electroboogie (8A+). I made a couple of attempts and then it started raining/hailing - it was not meant to be today…maybe another day. We started walking back to camp, but by the time we reached to Bruno Bloc the weather had cleared a bit and I decided to give Cote du Sichuan (7C+) a couple of tries. The last move of this long problem involves a HUGE, scary dyno. I tried the dyno once (without doing any of the other moves) and did not stick it…So, it seemed to make sense to try it from the start. After a couple of poor attempts and stupid foot slips I was through the bottom and middle parts of the problem staring at the final hold which looked miles away…so I threw any way and managed to stick the final hold. There is no video or photos because I was too worried about landing on my head…Oh, ya, when some other guys that were there saw that I was going to attempt Cote du Seshuan they lent me their pads which was really nice.

In other news we have found the best instant coffee ever. It rivals the press coffee we have been making. It has also been really cold here. When we left Font the temperatures were like 37 C, now the car temperature is reading 8 C at 11:15 am….burrr. Add some wind and hail to that and it feel pretty cool.

For some reason the last two nights Krissy has woken up in the middle of the night not knowing where she was. She has been thinking that she is waking in a cave or something like that (yup, she is crazy) and all she can hear is water (the river next to us). She searches for her headlamp and then figures out that she is actually in a tent…hmmm.

Random:
-Two guys pulled into the climber campground with a huge RV that definitely does not fit in here
-The driving here is fun
-Link to the movie we will be in: www.rtr.ch - you can search Magic Wood - it won’t be up for a while though
-People are serious about bouldering here - everyone seems to be on long bouldering trips
-I think we have met some famous European climbers, I’m just not sure who they are exactly.
-We saw one guy with a pair of prototype La Sportiva Speedsters (this will mean nothing to a lot of you)
-The public washrooms here are all REALLY nice
-The toilette paper in Switzerland is much better than in France (it is very soft according to Krissy)
-Krissy might be starting to like Magic Wood a little better, but just a little