The Never Ending Story

June 28th, 2009

Last Thursday (26th) we took a rest day and just drove around beautiful Switzerland. First we headed toward Feldis, a tiny little town on top of a mountain. There we found the perfect spot for a picnic and some photo’s.
Next we drove through a bunch of smaller villages towards Magic Wood and met some pretty big cows just hanging out. We decided to keep driving past Magic Wood to Juf. There the road just stops. Juf is the highest year-round inhabited village in the Alps (~2150 meters). Pretty spectacular. From there we went through this one-way tunnel that brought us to this giant dam. Turns out, it was also the Italian/Swiss border! That was cool.

Once we got home, we heard this loud, beat-up car coming in our direction…it was Florian, his brother Manuel, and their friend Chris. It was nice to see a familiar face and have an old friend to talk to and to translate stuff for us.

Friday and Saturday we all climbed.
I got my traverse project on my 1st try, “Madame Etoile” and started working “Traversatta” (7A+), Ben did “Zilliman” (7A+), then he did “Never Ending Story 2” in two tries! That’s an 8A! We were stoked.




He tried part 1 and just about broke his chin falling on a rock.
Manuel is working “Right Hand of Darkness” an 8A, Flo is working “Pura Vida” 8A+ and “Never Ending Story 1” as well. Chris is working “Wonderboy”. Ben and Manuel are also working “Piranja”…Ben has it wired, and towards the end of the day stuck the crux (dyno to sharp, small edge) but the elbowed the wall and pinged off…losing some of his knuckles). Once he’s healed, he’ll get it right away (He’s pretty bruised and cut up right now, hence the rest day today).

Today is HOT. We are in Andeer and our car is reading 31 degrees!

Oh, and we met and talked to “The Outsider”. We got autographs for Mark and Jill…jk. He was only here for one night, just passing through I guess.

Video’s of some of this to come.

Randomness:
We are all saddened by the loss of our dear friend MJ. We dedicated our climbs yesterday to the Kind of Pop. Seriously, that’s so crazy! I was just walking through the grocery store and saw that Michael Jackson’s pic was on the cover of all the newspapers but couldn’t understand what was written. I checked Perez real quick and found out. That’s nuts! And Ferrah Fawcet! I’m missing all the celebrity gossip here.