Joakim Andersson

The first of two big problems of the day. I climbed very nervously and long hesitated in wet section with pushing up my left foot . Then I fell immeditely I grabbed the resting jug because my right foot slipped. The second attemp was much better. I did not hesitate in wet section, very well mentally focused I dried hands in jug go on to crux. Crimp like side-pull, very bad intermediate and small dyno to good hold. But fall is coming. NO!!! Whole situation is not very positive. 9:20 AM, weird clouds on the sky and I still had not done even the first pitch.

Adam Ondra writes about his ascent of WoGü.

Very exciting to read. Adam is such an amazing climber!

I found Ethan Pringle’s hang-board routines the other day (explanation and downloadable excel sheet).

I’m going to try his unmodified 20 minute routine this evening but I’m not as strong as he (yet) so won’t use the same holds as him. I do have the same kind of Metolius Simulator hang-board which sits perfect over the door in our walk-in closet.

Last Friday, the last real vacation day, we went to Fjärdhundra. A bit of clouds now and then but mostly it was a brilliant warm day with lots of sun. A perfect way to end the vacation!

Fjärdhundra is one of driest crags I know. It’s located quite open next to a field and gets sun all through the day, so we were very surprised to find rivers of water flowing down the cliff at multiple places.

After warming up I tried Apor på åkern, a 6c+ route I’ve looked at earlier but never tried. It actually proved to be quite straightforward. I did the two first clips easily, then hanged and rested before doing the next scary clip with ground fall potential unless you have pre-hanged slings as you can’t do the clip from the jug without the sling already in place. After that it took a few tries to figure out the top part, mostly because I was stupid and unnecessarily scared.

On the next try I would have sent if I hadn’t grabbed the third hand hold from the top with the wrong hand and stupidly refused to reverse as I was convinced it was the correct sequence even though it was wrong!

The next try was in vain as the sharp Fjärdhundra granite had ruined the skin on my sensitive finger tips and I wasn’t stubborn enough to ignore it. But I’m happy with almost doing a 6c+ on my first real redpoint attempt after a recon climb. I’m sure I’ll send the route on the next visit.

As we had the rope up, I couldn’t avoid trying the 7b+ start called Studenten. That was quite humiliating. The holds were chalked but didn’t feel much like holds. One in three hand holds was something I could pull on, the rest I couldn’t even hold my weight with. The result was more hanging than climbing but it’s good to try something way too hard every now and then.

As “cool-down” I figured I would do Besökarna Direkt, 6c. A route we tried a few years back. Then we had no luck with the start and I thought that now I should be better and stronger so “how hard can it be?”.

Well, apparently it can be pretty hard. Now I could hold the crimps but I couldn’t figure out what to do with the feet. I ended up cheating to get up to the second bolt, the rest (the 6b+ part) went smoothly and without any problems. That’s a bit of a relief as I remember having problems with that part the previous time.

To finish off the day I did the 6b+ variant on toprope as the last route of the day.

A week ago we took the long drive and walk to Beatelund with the promise of a sunny day. Unfortunately the day started with us getting lost during the final short walk through the forest to the crag. To make things even better a rain shower made everything wet and slippery.

Finally around noon we had figured out the right way but naturally all the easier routes were wet from the rain so we started the day with lunch.

The routes on the overhanging wall down by the water dried fast and after the coffee they were dry enough for us. I chose Mosarmasse 6c as the warm-up route and I almost succeeded with the onsight but I missed a crucial hand hold and fell off on the upper part. The route was quite uninspiring though and then Camilla didn’t feel like climbing it, I cleaned it on toprope as I couldn’t be bothered to lead it again.

Next we got a rope up on Håll i dig 6c+ and Land of broken dreams 7a. I did one run on toprope on Håll i dig to figure out the crux and then led it pretty easily. I guess I should have tried to flash/onsight it as it was quite obvious how to solve the crux move. Next we worked a bit on Land of broken dreams 7a but we seemed to lack either core body strength or technique because even though all the holds were jugs the moves inbetween them felt pretty hard.

The rest of the photos from the day are here.