Graduation Treats - 20. Juni 2013

So I’ve been to Magic Wood every weekend before leaving for Africa, investing my free time into climbing instead of studying. On the first two weekends, the river still had an incredible amount of water due to the heavy rainfalls last month. You could try a dive start at Beachblock and Unendliche Geschichte looked like some crazy deep water soloing highball… ;)

Luckily most of my projects were up in the woods, among them La Boume de Luxe (7B), an amazing line with a lot of moves I could finally put together.

Foto: Viola Sommer

After countless of tries, I finally managed to do Stressman (7A), for me one of the hardest problems of that grade I’ve climbed so far. I guess this kind of climbing just doesn’t suit me very well… Yet it showed me I really made some progress with my finger strength, although I’m still a lot weaker than I wish to be…

Foto: Viola Sommer

I also did Tricky (7A+/7B), which is truly quite tricky and actually a lot nicer than I gave it credit for. Next we tried From Darkness to Sunshine (7C+/8A), a really nice but very long line starting down in the darkness cave. I might have to work on my endurance before I can do those more than 20 moves but I’m psyched to try again! On that occasion we also walked past Nalle’s new line The Understanding (8C) and I wondered how it was even possible to do more than one move, it looks impossibly hard! Well, here’s the answer, very nicely filmed by Stefan Schlumpf:

Understanding HD from True Badu on Vimeo.

After that, our Austrian friends got me to try Morgenlatte (7B) again and with some beta inspiration I managed to put it together.

Foto: Tobias Lanzanasto

Since they also wanted to try Schrotti (7B), which I did last year, I tried the right version called Hageltrauma (7B) and was suprised how quickly it came together, the first move went down a lot easier than last year. Last but not least, I made some hopeless attempts on Foo Fighter (7B+/7C), wondering that I even stayed off the ground long enough for Tobi to take a picture ;)

Foto: Tobias Lanzanasto

All in all, I had some great days out in the woods, climbing with great people and enjoying every aspect of bouldering!

Meanwhile I successfully finished all my exams and finally graduated, all the pressure gone and soooo ready for a whole month in Rocklands! On top of everything, I got the confirmation that I’d qualified to compete at the Boulder World Cup in Munich and the European Championships in Eindhoven when I get back in the end of August, super stocked!! In about 48 hours I’ll be on my way to the airport, facing almost 20 hours of traveling but so looking forward to be in South Africa by Monday :)