El Chalten

After a ridiculous transit half way around the world Owen and I have made it to El Chalten in Argentina. Climbers we met at the airport who were leaving spoke of one of the best seasons in terms of weather for a long time. Apparently we had recently missed an unheard of 6 day weather window. The downside to all this is that there had been too much melting and large rockfalls were common and the schrund at the base of the walls had become so wide it had become hard to cross. So it is a good thing the weather has taken a turn for the worse this week dumping new snow up high. We need the time to get ourselves organised anyway. 

El Chalten is a tourist town catering to trekkers and climbers and is jam packed with people so we have managed to get ourselves in at a youth hostel till Monday when we have organised an apartment above a bakery for the remaining 5 weeks. The other option is to camp but with 50kg's of gear each we decided the cushy way was the way to go (Thanks to Seth and Sea to Summit for helping me out replacing all my old gear!). We plan to head up to Paso Superior to familiarise ourselves with the walk and stash some gear during this bad weather period in preparation for attempting the Franco-Argentine route on Mt Fitzroy. There is also a lot of sport climbing and bouldering around El Chalten where the weather is much nicer. We did some sport climbing yesterday and have a boulder festival on tomorrow so there is plenty to keep us busy.

El Chalten with Mt Fitzroy in the distance.

Mt Fitzroy

Its windy up there!

2011 - A Good Year

I just made it back from the long 30 plus hour drive from Mt Arapiles in Victoria ending my latest foray away from Perth and allowing me to contemplate the goals I achieved and did not achieve during another ‘blink and you miss it’ year. It was hot in Arapiles and the glassy slopy sidepulls covering my number one goal of 2011 (and 2010!) were hard to hold! I’ve decided that Punks in the Gym (32) is hard! Add a grade if you can’t reach the holds from the good feet and two grades if its 40oC. The first day wasn’t too hot and I managed to catch the ‘birdbath’ hold twice from the ground but not finish it off. After that I got tired and didn’t rest enough and the conditions progressively got worse. The only solution to this for me is to go climb some even harder routes elsewhere and then come back fresh and show that pointless 25m section of rock who’s boss!! It was a great trip though and as always the friends I got to climb with and drink coffee in the pines with (you know who you are) made the climbing just an afterthought. I did get up some classics in the heat though including Trojan (25) onsight, Masada (29), and Denim (26). A highlight was definitely the second shot battle wrestling my way up Denim when I was super tired on the last day in mid 30 degree temps.

Staring down the crux move on Punks in the Gym. Photo: Alex Glaser

Jarrod entering the crux sequence on Punks in the Gym. Photo: Alex Glaser

As for the rest of 2011 I feel I balanced work and climbing well getting stronger than ever although I don’t feel I portrayed this in my achievements on rock. This may be due to a lack of opportunity as well as a decrease in my power endurance due to the amount of time I spent on site working and not climbing. There is definitely a big difference between your boulder strength and your power endurance! I did manage to climb better locally this year finishing off two projects in Mountain Quarry, Death Star (29) and Take Off (29), both still unrepeated, and managed to send Tim’s Animalistic Rage (29). Best ascent of the year would have to be the five star L’ami de toute le monde (31) in Ceuse. It’s a pity I didn’t get to do what I wanted in the alpine during 2011 and that has reflected itself in my 2012 goals.

Despite having a good job I’ve decided to go full time climbing for a while with a focus this year on some stand out ascents. You’ll never achieve amazing things unless you dream of amazing things. I remember when I started climbing I was intimidated just looking at pictures of Cerro Torre and Mt Fitzroy in Patagonia thinking they were the ultimate ‘bad ass’ peaks. Maybe I know a little better now but I am still stoked to have booked my tickets there with Owen for February and the first half of March. In April Owen and I will be hanging out in the European Alps and I’ll get to continue to work on one of the biggest weaknesses of my all round climbing abilities which is mixed climbing. After that I am keen to keep plans open but I am super motivated to get rid of an inner belief I climb grade 31. I can count the number of routes I’ve tried harder than 31 on one hand and Punks is really the only one I’ve had a good crack at. 3 months in Spain at the end of the year should sort me out :)

2012 is the year to step up, take the plunge, push yourself...

The Petzl RocTrip China

I managed to organise another 2 weeks break from work and decided to go to the Petzl Roctrip mainly because for once it was on this side of the world and being in China i knew alot of the people attending. A large contingent of people from Yangshuo where i had previously worked were going as well as a bunch of friends i knew from climbing elsewhere in the world. The event itself was only officially four days long but most people went planning to spend a week or two there. The Roctrip is similar to the RipCurl Pro Search surfing event in that it is based in a new area around the world each year generally helping to open them up to the crowds through development and awareness. This year it was in the Getu Valley, China which is accessed through a poor rural village. It was amazing to see the contrast between the poor local farmers and the international climbers. I am not sure the locals ever figured out exactly what was going on but hopefully the cash injection into the village from their hospitality helps them out alot.


The Getu Valley itself is the typical karst limestone landscape seen everywhere in southern China and down through Vietnam, Laos, Thailand etc. with one major exception... The Great Arch. This amazing feature sits high up on a hill and is internally about 100m wide, 80m high and 150m long. On a clear day the sun rises shining a beam of light through the arch into the Getu valley.
The climbs in the area had been equipped over the last couple of seasons and you could tell they hadnt had much traffic. A thin layer of dust on the holds and loose rock were common and i couldnt help but think that although the setting was beyond amazing the quality of the routes wasnt quite as good as those found in Yangshuo. Despite this i did do some amazing routes in the grade 27-29 range almost all of which were a grade or two overgraded. The best part of the trip was definitely watching and talking to some of the best climbers in the world. The main thing i noticed that sets them apart wasnt their strength but their fitness. Its the kind of fitness you can only achieve by climbing full time.
So now after meeting cool climbers from all around the world, a quick culture immersion and being exposed to the lifestyles of full time climbers i am back at work and training hard with renewed motivation.

Steve McClure onsighting a 7c+/28. All the pockets were slopers with many hidden holds.

Dani Andrada belayed by Chris Sharma on an 8 pitch 8c/33.

Europe 2011

Europe was great as always and I achieved my major sport climbing goal of the trip with a quick ascent of L'ami de toute le monde (8b/31) at Ceuse. The highlight of the trip was definitely Lawrence and Marikas wedding in Poland. It seemed less of a specific event that we would have in Oz and more of a multiday ongoing celebration where everyone was up all night consuming huge amounts of vodka and food before sleeping a few hours in the middle of the day and starting all over again in the evening. During the four blurred days i was in Poland i even managed to get out climbing with Lawrence (on the morning of his wedding) at a small limestone cliff underneath the monastery where the ceremony was to take place. All the routes here seemed short and powerful and hard, probably due to lack of sleep, but i still managed a nice 7c i never got the name off. It seems most Polish words don't actually need many vowels and i noticed street names that where 12 or 15 characters long!

After Poland the plan was for Rob and I to head to the Matterhorn but the forecast showed thunderstorms all week. Emil and Mel who we had met up with in Ceuse where down in the Verdon Gorge in southern France so we drove there after flying Krakow to Milan instead. It was super hot in the gorge but the crags in the shade where still climbable. It seems strange to go to the Verdon and do single pitch sport climbs when the multipitch climbing is so good but due to the temps we had no choice and the single pitch stuff there is actually really good anyway. I found the grading slightly harder than Ceuse although it may have just been the style as i was trying more tufa based routes whereas Ceuse had more pockets. The Verdon has a ridiculous amount of rock and the week we spent here running around the gorge crossing tyroleans and climbing anything in the shade barely scratched the surface of whats here.

Emil on a tufa packed 7c/27 in the Verdon.

Another 6-7 hour drive and i was back in Milan to drop Rob off for his flight back home. I was meant to keep on driving up to the Marmolada to try a route i have always been psyched to try called 'Le Poisson' or 'The Fish' on the south face of the Marmolada which goes at grade 26 and is meant to be super run out and scary but Lawrence had a job offer he couldn't refuse and had to bail so i ended up heading to Grenoble to meet up with another friend Scott Boladeras. We climbed on the local crags around Grenoble with climbs which i thought were very solidly graded. Grenoble is an amazing place to live if you want a large amount of local areas to climb only 5-15 minutes from your house.
I ended up with two days left at the end of the trip, since Scott had left to go climbing in Canada, that i wasnt sure what to do with. After having to really fight on the Grenoble grade 26's to get them second go i had doubts on how i was climbing so i thought id just head back to Ceuse to hang out with the British crew that where there and just take it easy. To my surprise i wasnt actually climbing that bad and managed a soft 8a+/30 on my second go. That made the next big drive back to Milan alot more bearable and ended a great trip even though i didnt make it into the alpine.