After seven months bouldering overseas I’m finally back in the states! It feels good to be home. Sorry for the lack of updates but my computer crapped out a few weeks after we got to South Africa. It’s all fixed up now so I’m back to editing video full time. I’m home in Atlanta for a month before I head off for a big US roadtrip at the beginning of October. I’m currently shopping for a van and getting some much needed rest from climbing.

My trip to Rocklands was great; the place is everything you imagine when you see the photographs and videos, tall lines on orange and black streaked rock, flat landings and easy topouts. It’s a great combination that lends itself to classic highballs such as:

Cedar Spine 7B+

Macho King 7C+

Springbok 7B+

Splash of Red 7C+

Those shots are stills from our video footage. I wish I could tell you the video will be finished soon but I haven’t even had time to look at the footage yet. Our Swiss video on the other hand IS almost finished and it is awesome. It’s got epic falls, epic sends, and epic bungee jumps!

Now that I’ve got my computer up and running again I will be updating the site frequently. I’ll post up some more photos from South Africa in a couple days and then I’ll have a few wrap up posts from the trip before the end of the month.

A storm up at the pass

Kenyon on Shosholoza

The Sassies. Photo by Les

Les climbing Pinotage 7c+

Leslie on Pinotage

Leslie on Pinotage

Photo by Les

Zebras

Photo by Les

Kenyon

The Rocklands

The sunsets here are some of the best I’ve ever seen and the stars are incredibly bright here. You can easily see the milky way. Pretty much everyone speaks English, but for most locals it’s not their first language. Most people around here speak Afrikaans which I believe is a combo of Dutch and native African languages. Dankie means thank you, that’s about all I know. The landscape here is very open, you can see for miles and miles but it’s not flat, there’s a lot to look at out there from mountains and hills to rocks, etc. There is so much rock here and you can easily see it all since there aren’t many trees to be found.

We’ve been here for one month and it has only rained three days. Pretty much everyday is clear blue skies with lots of sunshine. We hear that it’s not the norm for this time of year, usually it rains a lot more so we’ve finally gotten lucky with the weather! The temps here are really warm considering it is winter. Usually it’s in the 60′s and 70′s with a few cold days mixed in. Luckily it doesn’t need to be cold to climb hard here. We have a crew of five Americans staying at the Loes house out near the Sassies. It’s Me, Les, Ian Cotter Brown, Jesse Bonin, and Kenyon. Between the five of us we’ve managed to tick a double digit boulder problem almost every day and it seems with our various strengths, one of us will be able to climb almost every problem here. Which is a good thing considering there are so many good lines here.

Les on Pinotage 7C+

Outside of the climbing, life is pretty good here. Everything is way cheaper than Europe or the US. A beer at the bar costs 12 rand or $1.50. An amazing meal with several beers at one of the nicer restaurants might cost you $15 at most. Or you can get a burger at De Kelder’s for $5. The burgers here are some of the best I’ve ever had!

Jesse on Green Mamba 8A+

Life in this part of South Africa is very simple. There is only one paved road within 30 km of here and it was just paved last year! Many of the locals do not own cars so you’ll see them walking along the road or waiting for a ride. The closest grocery store to our house is in Clanwilliam which is a 30 minute drive on the road that was recently paved. Our house doesn’t have a tv, radio, heat, AC, or even a postal address. It does have five beds, a kitchen, and only costs us $10 a night so it’s pretty nice! The days are short, we wake up at sunrise, around 7:30AM, and it gets dark at 6PM. We have a hard time staying up past 9 after eating a big meal and drinking a few beers so we get more than enough rest. I think the world cup kept many climbers away from the rocklands this year since it’s pretty empty here. There are maybe 20 people at the campground and no one is in the other houses near ours.

To sum up my initial impression after living and climbing in The Rocklands for one month, this might just be my favorite bouldering destination. Life is good here.

Les learning a crazy game

Tom and Lucas dodging exploding ash

Alex on a rad 7B. Photo by Les

In the end we were much more fond of Ticino than Magic Wood, even ignoring the weather. We found the lines and the rock to be better in Ticino. Many of the ‘classics’ of magic wood don’t topout such as Supernova, Never Ending Story Parts 1 & 2, Sofa Surfer, Piranha, etc. Not to say those are all bad boulder problems but dropping off isn’t the same to me as topping out a boulder. I ended up projecting a long crimpy 8B called One Summer in Paradise. I did all the moves in 30 minutes so I was optimistic about sending it quickly. Four sessions later it didn’t happen! I climbed to the end where the crux lies 20+ times in conditions ranging from fair to raining and never had the energy to finish it.

One Summer in Paradise 8B. Photo by Guillaume

We are excited to leave the continent tomorrow as we head south to South Africa. Our flight leaves Paris tomorrow at 11PM and after a layover in Johannesburg, we should touch down in Cape Town at 2PM Wednesday. After a three or four hour drive north, we will reach our new home for the winter just outside the Rocklands.

Chironico

On day one we headed over to Komilator (8a), and with a scream that Tarzan would be proud of Alex dispatched on his first go of the day.  Next we went down the hill to area 101.  Alex had his sights set on a boulder named Electric Ant (8b), and I had mine set on a problem called Arete with a Pocket (7c+) .  Alex soon discovered that the first move of Electric Ant is heinous.  A huge move off a razorblade to another small crimp.  Kudos to Dave Graham… He decided to do the problem one move in, dropping the grade of the problem to 8a+.  Alex came desperately close to sending, but had to drop from the slopey lip of the boulder because he was too pumped.  I did all the moves to Arete with a Pocket (thanks to Martin for the beta) and we called it quits for the day.

Les saying hello to a mountain goat

Day two.  We headed back down to Area 101 and Alex and I both dispatched our projects quickly.

Les climbing Arete with a Pocket

Alex climbing Electric Ant

We ran into Dai Koyamada on the last day of his trip, and got to enjoy his company for a while.  He has absolutely destroyed Switzerland over the last 35 days.  His trip could possibly be the strongest month of bouldering ever.  Apparently, before coming to Switzerland, his goal was to either:

1) Send four 8b+’s

or

2) Send one 8c

… He did both.  Not to mention all the other problems he destroyed (like Klienfisch, an 8b he did in about 30 minutes that day).  He stuck the first move of  Electric Ant (a mind blowing thing to watch), but unfortunately split his tip in the process.  After talking to Dai, I think Alex and I are both excited about visiting Japan to climb. Dai and his friend/photographer are some of the nicest people we’ve met on our trip so far; it’s very inspiring to see such a strong climber be so down to earth and humble.

Dai doing the first move of Electric Ant (from his blog)

Dai on Electric Ant (from his blog)

The next day was filled with my efforts on Komilator, and after my heel blew for the 800th time I called it quits.  

Entering crux territory

I stuck it!

damnit

The weather is once again getting too warm to send anything hard, but fortunately the weather looks good in Magic Wood… so back we go.

On an unrelated note, we’re sitting at McDonalds in Bellinzona again (free wifi remember?) and I just paid 7.90 francs ($7 US) for a burger. That was just the sandwich, I can’t afford 13 francs for a meal! Luckily we camped for $0 this week so we have an extra franc or two to spend.

Dave

After that it never stopped raining; it sometimes slowed to a barely perceptible mist but there was always precipitation. We filled our days with books, chatter, cooking, and dreams of dry rock. Thankfully there is one boulder problem that stays dry even during rainfall, The Never Ending Story Part 2 7C+, which is an awesome problem down on the river with perfect polished rock. Les and I both managed to climb it quickly.

Les on The Never Ending Story Part 2

After that I climbed the only other dry problem, Massive Attack 8A, which is just a few hard moves that doesn’t really go anywhere (no top out). That was the end of the climbing so we returned to sitting under the tarp. Our dreams of dry weather didn’t come true and after six days of sitting in the rain, the forecast called for 10 more days of rain so we cut our losses and headed back to Ticino where the forecast was dry and even cooler than in April. Sorry for the lack of photos of Magic but it’s been wet and the psych has been low.

Pompeii

After we left our ocean view camping in Sorrento we traveled north to Florence. We thought we were going to miss our views of the water but the campsite in Florence is situated on a hill next to Piazzale Michelangelo with tremendous views of the city. We also discovered that the duomo isn’t the only thing to look at in the city as Florence is home to the most attractive females we found in Italy.

Florence

The David

We toured Florence for one full day before jetting off to our next destination, Venice. On the way we stopped by Maranello and Modena to check out the Ferrari and Lamborghini museums. Lamborghini turned out to be closed but the Ferrari museum didn’t disappoint.

The Enzo (a million dollar supercar) parked in front of an F50, F40, and the new 458

After the detour we arrived in Venice in time to catch a bus into the city, wander around, and get lost before the sun disappeared. We also spent the following morning in the city walking over bridges and watching the gondolas cruise by before departing for our more natural habitat of Switzerland.