Rock Deluxe

Sunday, May 15th, 2011 | climbing, new zealand, travel | 2 Comments

Now, New Zealand isn’t Europe, but it still got some quite decent rock. And, that’s for sure, some very, very decent scenery to play in.
After not climbing for a whole month in Indonesia (imagine that!), I just had to pin the climbing mission high on my flags for New Zealand. Could not help it. What followed was an epic two-month road trip throughout the South Island, chasing the sun and the crags. For some reason, we had five days of straight sunshine down in the Fiordlands, a place with an annual rainfall of 6000+mm. The regions around Queenstown entertain you with some Schist that actually holds your body weight and lovely Wanaka had us come back three times.

Bouldering in world-famous Castle Hill is, of course, a must-do. This magical place offers some 10000+ boulder problems. Literally. But those weird rock formations make sure what you won’t find a single one of them since you won’t be able to spot a single hand- or foothold. But running into some local-pro’s helps a lot to get you psyched for the day. “So how are you supposed to get up there?!”, a common phrase.
New Zealand’s sport-climbing Mecca Paynes Ford got me bound for three weeks (it happens to everyone). But who could possibly defy days of two-hour break-feasts, perfect sport climbing, and legendary campfire-circles nursed by the conversations of beautiful and strange climbing bums? Right. Might as well stay another day. But now, unmistakeably, winter is creeping in, slowly but surely, so I have to flee to the North, counting the days. Counting the days!

Praise the Wombat

Sunday, March 27th, 2011 | australia, climbing, travel | 7 Comments

Rainday. Restday. Internetday. Reason enough for one of those sparse update here within (does anyone out there actually care? I’ve now spent over an hour on this!), after all it’s been almost three weeks since I’ve left Oz and a lot has happened since. But I’m slacking, no hurries, mate, as the Aussies would say, thus one step at a time. Featured continent of the day: Australia!

Randomness had me stay for precisely one month, as it turned out, down in Down Under. After couchsurfing Sydney for about a week, I decided on a spontaneous road-trip some thousand kilometers up the coast, from Melbourne to Adelaide. Of course, it was great times and even the Japanese groups posing in front of the Twelve Apostles somewhat amusing; but I don’t need to tell you about those, you’ve heard the stories, you’ve seen the pictures. The things that were much rather interesting were the small pleasures of life, e.g. camping on a golf course, bouldering in sandstone-paradise of the Grampians, or those funny creatures hopping ’round the camp-spots, trying to steal some of your freshly-grilled Spam (Uh yes, Spam indeed). Correct, we were living up the camping (or as some might call it, the cheap) life, because Australia is, apart from being massively huge and vast and wild and beautiful, mainly: ridiculously expensive (especially coming from Asia leaves you with a rise of prices of literally 3000%).

My favorite little place, however, was the island of Tasmania. It had the deepest blue I’ve ever seen, anywhere on this planet. This fact alone made me stop about a hundred times, gazing down some 200m cliff-face straight into the ocean, and think out loud: ‘Wuuh.’ A magnificent and fascinating place; Driving around, in this vast remoteness, is a treat by itself: You’ll get the most stunning landscape without seeing anyone else, for hours (minus the millions of road-kills of which you could feed a smaller city with and the Wallabies obviously trying to commit suicide, for whatever reason). And above all, I’ve seen the most adorable living thing imaginable and from now on my official favorite animal of all times: A Wombat. A life-changing experience.

Pure Poser Porn

Thursday, January 13th, 2011 | climbing, thailand, travel | No Comments

Yes, I did steal that glorious title from the cover story of an Austrian climbing magazine, but it stuck in my head ever since. The article was about bad-ass rock climbing near Krabi, Thailand, which is what I did, too. Maybe not as bad-ass though, but still, I tried. The article furthermore philosophizes how every climber worldwide strives for that one, that epic climbing picture or his or herself. Pure Poser Porn indeed. Well here is mine:

Jumping back down forced me on painkillers for about a week. Worth it, right? No pain, no gain, I guess. Celebrating New Year’s grooving to that climbing-dudes-backpacker-style-vibe right on Ton Sai beach, witnessing myriads of fire balloons eventually transforming into distant stars was also pretty hard to beat. Oh how I will do that again! Oh, and happy new year folks. I feel it’s gonna be a good one.

Paradise Lost Found

Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 | climbing, thailand, travel | 5 Comments

So I ventured on to Thailand to finally look into that thing that other call “holiday” or “vacation”: you know, beaches and such. Arrived in Bangkok and the rumors turned out to be true, love it or hate it. I loved it – my commonly applied battle plan to explore new, big cities – aimlessly wandering around the city and trying to get lost – proved to be excellent once again. The choice to couchsurf Bangkok as well – thanks, you beautiful people out there!
Hopes were high for the next stop, the tiny  island of Koh Tao. And, well, for a good reason – this place deserves the prefix “paradise”. A turtle-shaped tropical island, scattered with tons of massive granite boulders to jump on and surrounded my world-class (subtract the thousands of other divers, maybe) diving sites (oh, by the way, call me an advanced open water diver from now on – yes, I do get fancy about that). Beat that?

Of course I got suck here and don’t dare to leave just yet. How could I, why should I? Also met up with my two lovely friends, Betty and Manu, which whom I plan to share some adventures from now on. And Christmas – uuh, it promises to be a nice one, considering the constant temperature of 29 degrees and the fact that a Mango Lassie on the beach checks in at about the same price as a bottle of water back home.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Nepal in a Nutshell

Sunday, November 28th, 2010 | climbing, nepal, travel | 4 Comments

My journey started the way any decent journey is supposed to start: with a major hangover and some Aspirin trying to fight it. Still digesting the, as I remember, two or three good-bye-Europe-beers I’ve had I was though excited for the trip afar. So to Kathmandu I flew (rhyme!).

And here I am, three weeks later. Each of those days here in Nepal featured such a vast amount of new and exciting impressions and experiences that I could write a blog post five to six pages long every day, still missing details. But because I’ve better things to do than writing blog posts and you with your busy life’s out there got better things to do than reading blog posts, here’s Nepal in a Nutshell.

To begin with, this is simply impossible. Nepal is one of the poorest and at the same time most astonishing and beautiful countries in the world. Everyone will tell you that, I can now approve. To study especially much of the countryside and beloved Nature, I’ve been on a trekking tour circling the Annapurna massive in central Nepal for the last 18 days. Without Internet, without a cell phone, and, sometimes, without electricity after all; utterly enjoyable.

The trek itself was not at all technically challenging, but carrying a 18kg rucksack for 250km and up a 5416m pass is a different story. But on the bright side, my pack got lighter and lighter every day as I kept using more and more toothpaste. I guess I could have packed lighter – so I carried my climbing shoes and chalk all the way for the sake of defining one (in numbers: 1) but world-class boulder problem at 3600m altitude (I propose V5/V6 – details and location on request). Furthermore, I found out the hard way that it actually gets painfully cold above 4000m. Anyway, the trek proved to be the perfect choice since I’ve witnessed a county so diverse that it was hard to believe that I am, somehow, still in Nepal. More, I felt like walking through four exceedingly different countries (with the common denominator that they served Dal Bhat in all of those countries) within just a few days: Starting deep in a rich, sub-tropical jungle, ascending to a desert surrounded by 7000m peaks, followed by a high alpine setting including snow showers, and finally strolling through rough Tibetan highlands with storm-like wind dusts.

Such a diversity is hard to grasp – if possible at all, only with a few days delay. Besides those almost unreal landscapes, the culture and people of Nepal deserve an equal share. To be honest, it takes its time to realize that you are actually trekking through a third-world country – and that that camera you just pointed to picture that cute little Nepali kid is probably worth more than this very kid will earn his or her entire life. I also started with the mission of not taking too many pictures – only the very picturesque moments should be covered. I kept to this mission – and ended up with 700 pictures. Here are some random four of them:

But as everything on this planet, also the Annapurna Circuit has its drawbacks: namely road construction. The plan to connect Manang to the main “highway” system destroys quite some otherwise peaceful trekking hours. So whoever is thinking of doing that trek should do it, well, now.

After all those days of walking and constantly moving on, I am now back to (well, relatively speaking) civilization in Pokhara where I’ll relax my tired feet and stuff my notoriously empty stomach – so if you’d excuse me, I’ll be lounging down at the lake, sipping on a Lassi and trying to delete at least 350 of those pictures. Ah, how peaceful a phenomena a lake.

Lonely Porn

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 | climbing, travel | 4 Comments

Und schon wieder so ein verwirrender Titel. Es geht ja eigentlich um einen Klettertrip nach Lander, Wyoming, was per Definition recht wenig mit Porn gemeinsam hat. Dieser wundersame Titel entstammt, zur Erklärung, einer Diskussion am Lagerfeuer über tolle Routennamen; Besagter ist bis dato mein Favorit, deshalb.

Wieder ein Kletterausflug also, schön, tolle Landschaften, perfektes Wetter, gute Freunde, und so weiter. Und elf Stunden Autofahrt natürlich; Die Interstate I-80 und ich, wir rufen und mittlerweile beim Vornamen. Go West! Aber, liebe Leute, dieser Eintrag hat einen anderen Hintergrund. Dieses Mal geht es um eine, meine, “all-American experience“. Es wird eine Herausforderung, diese adäquat in Worte zu fassen. Vorher aber wie immer ein paar tolle Bildchen:

Man muss also wissen, dass der 4. Juli der US-amerikanische Nationalfeiertag ist. Independence Day, der Stolz der Nation, die Unabhängigkeit von Großbritannien seit 1776 in der heiligen Declaration of Independence festgehalten. Großes Ding. Nun war ich pyrotechnikaffiner Ausländer anfangs etwas enttäuscht, das angeblich tolle Feuerwerk in Omaha gegen eine Nacht in der Wildnis zu tauschen; Zu unrecht, wie sich herausstellen sollte. So beschloss das Rudel, nach einem ereignisreichen Klettertag und Bratwürsten doch aus unserem Camp raus und in das nächstgelegene Städtchen, Lander, zu pilgern und das Feuerwerk zu bestaunen.

Bei Dämmerungsanbruch waren die Straßen bereits mit überdimensionierten Pick-Up Trucks zugepflastert, wohin man auch blickt, ebenfalls überdimensionierte Amerikaner in Klappstühlen, der Geruch und das Bruzzeln von Grillfleisch omnipräsent. Wir schließen uns der Masse an und nehmen schließlich ganz oben auf einer großen Wiese mit Blick über ganz Lander Platz. Unter uns das halbe Dorf, geschätzte tausend Lander’er, mit Decken, mehr Klappstühlen und Chips. Die Show, die geboten wird, zauberte mir ein dauerhaftes Schmunzeln auf die Lippen: Aus den Boxen dröhnt eine hoch-theatralische Ausführung des amerikanischen Dramas hin zur Unabhängigkeit, ausgedehnt auf eine gute Stunde. Ausgeführt meist in Dialogform, mit (natürlich) Orginalzitaten von leidenden Zeitzeugen. Hinterlegt mit einer Hintergrundmusik, die mit ihrer Dramatik und Kitsch selbst einer Rosamunde Pilcher einen Schüttelfrost besorgen würde. Und jedes Mal, wenn von einem Kanonenschuss die Rede war, stieg ein riesiger Feuerball gen’ Himmel und erwärmte die Herzen. An Highlights und Kämpfen wurde die Erzählung durch kurzes Feuerwerk unterbrochen, um die Zuschauer noch mehr mitzureisen. Patriotismus auf einem neuen, ungesehenen Niveau. Die Krönung dann natürlich am Schluss, zur Unterzeichnung der Declaration of Independence – eine Feuerwerksshow, die ohne mit der Wimper zu zucken mit dem Innsbrucker Bergsylvester mithalten kann. Wenig erstaunlich? Lander, Wyoming, hat 6867 Einwohner.

Am nächsten Abend folgte dann der nächste kulturelle Höhepunkt, Rodeo! Der Eintritt allein war es schon wert, die Rodeo-Fans anstatt der Pferde zu bestaunen. Die Dichte an Bierbäuchen und Zahnlücken war schier spektakulär. “Howdy!”, Pferderennen, Bullriding und eine Disziplin, in der eine Gruppe ein junges (ooch so süßes!) Kälbchen mit dem Lasso fangen und fesseln muss. Und das alles im Cowboy-State Wyoming – authentischer hätte es wohl nicht sein können. Und zur Draufgabe, weil es so schön war, nochmals ein 20 Minute Feuerwerk. Uh ja! America, Land Of The Free. Ich traue mich, ein großes Fragezeichen hinter diesen Schwur zu setzten. Und wenn man darüber nachdenkt, dann ist der Titel ja doch sehr passend.

Slighty Left in 374 Miles

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 | climbing, travel | 1 Comment

Ewig kann man in Omaha nun wirklich nicht verweilen; Der übliche Ausweg: Roadtrip! So waren wir uns einig, und die Regeln des Spiels: Jeder der beteiligten Abenteurer darf seine/ihre Lieblingsdestination auf ein Zettelchen kritzeln, dann wird gezogen. Aus einem Hut, selbstverständlich. Und die (afro-amerikanische) Glücksfee entschied:

Missouri!

Ab in den Süüden. Der Masterplan: kein Plan! Einfach alle ins Auto (okey, Van) stecken und los düßen. Super, ne? Irgendwann gegen 4:30 a.m. machten wir dann doch für ein paar Stunden Schlaf am Wegesrand halt, dann weiter in die Tiefen der Ozarks. Oh ja, der Süden also. Am nächsten Morgen wurde uns dann klar, dass wir doch eventuell Lebensmittel einkaufen sollten; Und ernsthaft, eine Ansammlung von drei verrottenden Wohnwägen (“Trailerpark”) hat hier unten einen Ortsnamen. Eine Stunde Suchen und mit dem letzten Tropfen Benzin dann doch endlich, ein Supermarkt! Gerettet, vorerst. Konföderationsflaggen (ja, das waren die mit den Sklaven), mehr Kirchen (oder ähnliches) als Häuser, Kaffee für 50 Cent. Oh ja, der Süden also. Nach diesen aufschlussreichen Erfahrungen: Wild campen nebs Klippen und dem Current River, am nächsten Tag dann kayak-Action.

Und was das alles und im speziellen Autofahren so toll ist, nach einem Tag Omaha diesmal Aufbruch Richtung Westen. “Slightly left in 374 Miles”, verlautete das Navi, 16h one-way drive; Ziel:

Utah!

Seth hat mich also tatsächlich überredet, mit ihm (und Eric und Dave und Josh) eine Woche die Wüste nach Steinen zu durchkämmen (LOL, Spaceballs anyone?). Joes Valley nennen sie “one of America’s best” Boulderdestinationen, dies sollte sich bewahrheiten. Noch viel schöner: Eine Woche kein Handy, keine Laptop, kein Internet, keine Toilette, keine Dusche. Ist eben doch ein bisschen abgelegen, das Tälchen. Aber immerhin hatten wir einen Fluss, gefühlte Wassertemperatur knapp aber doch über dem Gefrierpunkt. Na, immerhin, die Biere blieben schön kühl.

Am Rückweg gab’s dann noch eine Bouldersession near Moab und ein Déjà-vu (von vor zwei Jahren) mit dem Sonnenaufgang in den atemberaubenden Arches National Park. Danach: 16h im Auto. Welcome to America!