English man in Font

Ned and the Californian arrived a couple of days ago so they dragged me away from my computer and to the rocks. It was nice to be out again but I’ve really not been climbing very much recently, so it was with very little expectation weighing me down that I drove up to the Zillertal.We had Emi on board too, so with all the local knowledge we were hoping things would fall into place a little more smoothly…

Up first was an appointment with Incubator at Ginzlingwald. Now I thought this was the classic hard problem of the Zillertal, being 8B and also being quite famous. In fact, it was pretty much the only problem I wanted to really do in the Zillertal, and I was prepared to put in a siege as 8B is still hard. After figuring out the moves Dave pulled on and fired it off, much to his own dismay and to our great joy. It was a super fast ascent and really showed what can happen when you do each move correctly and avoid mistakes… it’s not the strength that often lets us down, it’s the faults we have in our game. I persisted and tried to follow suit but the more tries I had the greasier it got. I was hitting the hold on the crux move every go, but my lower hand would grease off so it just wasn’t meant to be. I was a little disappointed not to have done it, because it was very much for the taking. I’m also a little disappointed because it’s not very hard. I expected to fight a lot for this thing, but in my opinion it’s too easy to be 8B. Perhaps an easy 8A+ would be more accurate, and this opinion comes from someone who’s really not bouldered in a long time. I was invigorated though, because I remembered just how much I enjoy bouldering, so the thought of getting back on a rope seems to be fading away. Maybe a hard redpoint will have to wait until next year… Or maybe I’m taking the easy option by returning to bouldering and returning to the familiarity of something I’m ok at rather than persisting with routes, which I’m incredibly bad at. I guess I have to mull it over in the next week.

From Ginzling we headed up to Breitlahner, to try an 8A called El Guahara. I’d seen a photo of this problem and decided I had to do it. It looked incredible in the photo…

Copyright Zlu Haller

I’d then been up in the summer with Neil to have a look at it and realised it was a very impressive bloc and line, but it was on horrifically sharp and small holds. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to return to do it. The line pulled me in and the holds pushed me away. Dave and Ned were psyched so I decided to get in the game and off we trekked. It’s so nice when you can hike into a boulder muching wild blueberries all the way there, but it unfortunately doesn’t make any difference to the sharpness of the holds. I decided I might as well try since we were there and after 20 mins or so I’d done all the moves, including climbing it without the first 2 moves which are on sharp holds but luckily aren’t all that hard. The jump move to the lip is amazing and this movement makes it a worthwhile bloc in my opinion.

Pictures copyright Emi Moosburger

I had a few tries from the start but my skin was beginning to torque on one of the holds so I resigned to leaving it for another day. I’d climbed what I decided was the good (and hard) part of the problem (jokingly christening it el guava) and so we did the only thing left to do…and doesn’t it look like SO much fun!

Pictures copyright Emi Moosburger

But the harsh reality is that 1 hour before sundown, swimming in the shade isn’t the most joyous experience in the world… but oh does it feel good when the blood rushes back to your extremities! Thanks to Emi for coming and taking great pics.