Petzl Crew's blog

"Sheer rock walls plunge into the depths of the arctic ocean with white and blue lines of ice streamlining their faces. It is a clear but cold day. The sun, which doesn't rise much above the horizon, can do little about it. And then there is wind, that makes enjoying the day a grim business. Except, it seems, for tough-looking locals... and, well, for ice climbers.

Norway, and northern Norway in particular, is a majestic place, that back in history must have had a special designer for it's breathtaking coastal landscapes, with snowy peaks and narrow fjords. It is not a place from fairy tales. It is a fairy tale itself.

Photos © Urban Golob

A small local climbing community in Tromso area organized an ice climber's meeting in Lavangen, with some 40 people from all over Europe attending. Unlike other such meetings elsewhere, here was a clear sense of exploration present. No guidebooks, info feeds coming only from other climbers, who have spread their trails into the valleys over a large area. Dry conditions made some lines appear more challenging, the others non-existent, but still there was much to do each day.

When not climbing ice, we were driving around, scouting, searching for new possibilities, waiving we'd come back as soon as possible. You can only love or hate these places. As I watch the reflections of Tromso, glimmering in the dark waters across the bay, under the green veil of Aurora borealis, I know very well how I feel.

Photos © Urban Golob

Erwan, Marius, Sjur and Urban: see you soon - til neste gang!"

Aljaž Anderle, ice climber, member of the Petzl Team.

Photos from the event :

Photos © Urban Golob and Aljaz Anderle

Writer, climber and guide Majka Burhardt has a penchant for combining adventure climbing and travel to exotic destinations. She does this with a heart-felt emphasis on gaining an greater understanding of the places she visits and the people inhabiting them. A few years ago, she and several other climbers travelled to Ethiopia, known to most Westerners has a place of desert and famine. Majka returned with stories of first ascents and a rich, new perspective of this often misunderstood country. Her book, Vertical Ethopia: Climbing Towards Possibility in the Horn of Africa, vividly documents her Ethiopian climbing adventure. Following an extensive book tour, Majka once again set her sights on Africa - Namibia, this time. In May 2009, she and a small team of climbers departed for that southern African country with two goals in mind: to find a way up an unexplored face, and to find a way into a deeper understanding of that region. She and her team returned having accomplished both. Majka recently released a DVD, Waypoint Namibia (see trailer below), which captures the sights and sounds of her journey. It is available for purchase from her site.
 
 

In late October, most of the Petzl team gathered in Siurana (Spain) for a week of exchange and climbing. The opportunity to mix together rock climbers, alpine climbers, trail runners and adventure racers.

The TIKKA² contest has been up and running for more than a month now. We've received many great submissions and not all the great ones won the weekly popular online vote.

First ascent by Yannick Graziani and Christian Trommsdorff - Oct 11th to 16th,2009

The route

A route of around 2400m long, 45 pitches (+some simu climbing, maybe 25% of the route), ED+, mostly ice/mixed and snow, a few pitches with just rock. Many very delicate snow ridges/walls/flutes to climb or traverse, fantastic gullies and mixed climbing, many vertical sections. A very committing route, complicated abseils during the descent, and also we had to climb from a gully back onto the base of the first tower (which we avoided by a 60m abseil on the way up).

Bottom of the face 4750m, bivies at around 5300m, 5800m, 6200, 6500m. We reached the top of the south face at an altitude of about 7000m.

We climbed the entire route free.

Gear

• 2x60 twin ropes
• 4 ice screws (not enough!)
• 6 friends
• a few nuts
• 10 pitons (we dropped 4)
• a few slings

We couldn't climb on Manaslu because of lack of acclimatisation and too much snow... We had a long 12-day period of rest due to very bad weather, but in the end managed to put up what we believe is a new route on the south face of Nemjung.

The climb

A great 6-day climb of the south spur, maybe the most beautiful we have ever done, certainly the most continuously steep, sustained and constantly exposed, although no pitches were as hard as the hardest ones on Chomolonzo or Pumari Chhish. Always uncertainty about the key passages; on the last day there was a miraculous hole in the very corniced ridge to cross to the other side.

We reached the top of the south face on Oct 15th at 2:15pm, but not the top of Nemjung. Another bivy would have been necessary to follow the fairly flat and long ridge to the summit, but the lower wind window was closing in on us, and I felt too weak to keep going that day which would have meant a long descent in the dark, so we turned around. The previous day I had been hit on the helmet by big chunk of ice and I felt in a kind of chock state, although I didn't loose consciousness.

The descent

Later on the long way down I would have several moments of "absence", in particular when dropping Yannick's backpack (2 days after the climb he went up to a bergschrund and found the pack, but the camera had dropped out...so we have only my photos and lost his 2 hours of film!).

For acclimatising we were able to spend only 3 nights at 5200m, 5400m and 5600m on the ridges east and west of our basecamp, when then had a 12 days forced rest period.

No objective dangers in stable conditions except for an easy 1 minute traverse of a couloir below the  big serac. We waited 3 full days after the massive snow dump and started early on Oct 11th, and came back down to BC at 22pm on Oct 16th. Note that on the 2nd day the cold weather helped - the gully behind the first tower has some mixed sections with very poor rock-, and on the third day the absence of strong wind probably prevented icicles falling off the 1st serac on the ridge.

A few more photos of the Nemjung south face first climb on Flickr.

Text and photos © Christian Trommsdorff

History of the route

"Yup, it's true, I've just made the second ascent of the famous route "Dreamcatcher".  For those of you that don't know what Dreamcatcher is, it's a route on the Cacodemon boulder in Squamish, BC.  Chris Sharma made the first ascent of the route back in 2005 and gave it a grade of 5.14d (9a).  Although many strong climbers over the past 4 years including Sonnie Trotter, Ethan Pringle and Paul Robinson have tried the route, none have been able to make the second ascent.  Before today, the route was unrepeated. I am also the first Canadian to climb an established 5.14d.  Another funny thing is that Chris Sharma made the first ascent on September 23, 2005.  Thats EXCACTLY 4 years ago to the day…  An old article from Climbing Magazine dates his send. So, maybe it’s just the time of year, maybe it’s the position of the moon but something about this days brings luck to that route.

 
Here’s a picture of me taken today by Simon Parton.  This attempt was the one just before the send."

A day to remember…

"Today was a pretty random day of climbing.  I have school every day during the week so getting out to Squamish is usually pretty hard to do during the week.  Today, I planned a trip with one of my good friends Jamie Chong.  I picked Jamie up from the SeaBus after school and headed straight to Squamish.  We arrived around 4:30 and figured we had about 3 hours of usable light.  We did a quick warm-up on easy boulders, went to some harder boulders then ran up to where Dreamcatcher lived.

My first attempt the day wasn’t very good.  I had only gotten through the slab section and stuck the dyno once before.  On my first attempt, I fell on the dyno because I had my foot way to high.  I came straight to the ground and rested 5 minutes before my next try.  My second try of the day was pretty good, I made it through the dyno, past the hard moves at the beginning of the rail all the way to the pin scars.  There’s a hard move where you have to bump your left hand from a small pocket in the pin scar about 2 inches higher to a bad sidepull.  While I was doing that move, I completely missed the hold and subsequently fell.  I fell too far to jug back up the rope so I once again came to the ground.  After resting about 30 minutes, I was getting nervous about the sunlight.  The sun had dropped down behind the mountain and would be dark in about an hour.  I figured if I fell again on the route, I wanted to rest another half an hour and give it a third burn.  I decided that if I didn’t do on this attempt, my third burn would be more of a working session than a redpoint session."

The send

"When I got on the route for the third time of the day, I felt confident.  The air was getting cooler and there were no distractions.  It was just me, the route and Jamie.  I walked up the slab pretty fast and started setting up for the dyno.  I jumped and it felt relatively easy.  I tried to move fast through the first hard section to save energy for the two harder parts at the end.  I made it through the bouldery moves at the bottom pretty fast.  There’s a pretty good rest about half way up the route right before the pin scars.  I got there and I was feeling good.  I rested until I felt recovered and kept going.  I started up the pin scars and everything started to click.  On the move that I fell on last time, my feet blew off… I quickly threw my left foot back into the pin scar and made the desperate move to the jug.  This was the last jug before the final crux of the route.  Chris fell 6+ times in the final crux of the route and I was getting to it for the first time.  I rested each hand a couple of times and started to get psyched up.  Before I left the rest, I took a couple really deep breaths and decided it was time.  I made the hard move around the corner with my right hand and quickly brought my left hand to the pinch on the corner.  I lunged right to the crux hold and felt pretty good.  I made room for my other hand to come in, then matched feet then did the move.  My feet blew off as I was re adjusting my fingers on the hold but I still felt good.  I pasted my left foot on the corner of the wall and threw into the next gaston.  Two more moves and I was done… I moved my left foot to a higher smear in the crack, matched hands and threw for the final jug.  I hit the jug and a stream of endorphins hit my body.  I rested back and forth a bit then did the last 4 moves and clipped the chains.  As I clipped the chains, I let out a victory cry that could be heard all around.  I had done it, the second ascent of Dreamcatcher."

Victory!

"As I lowered down off the route, I could barely believe it.  I had redpointed my first 5.14d.  Not only that but it was one of my longest projects to date.  One year after Chris made the first ascent in 2005, I started working the route.  It was more of a joke for me at the time because I thought that the route was too hard.  I could still do every individual move except the moves in the pin scar and up at the top seemed too hard to do on redpoint.  I had also never stuck the dyno.  All of that work took me about 3-4 days.  After that first year of trying it, I didn’t try it again until this year.  Since getting back from Europe at the beginning of this month, I tried the route a total of 8 times.  The first time I got on it again, it still felt so hard.  The slab hurt my feet, the dyno was big and the last crux moves seemed unfathomable.  The more I tried the route, the easier it became.  My muscles started to remember the individual moves and it started to feel strong.  The last time I was on the route was 3 days ago.  I had made it through the slab, past the dyno all the way up to the pin scars.  I only fell because the upper part of the pin scar was soaking wet.  When I went to pull the hardest move in the pin scar, I fired right out of the wet hold.  After that, I pulled past that part and worked the last crux about 5 times.  Since I had done the last moves so many times over and over again, when I got there on redpoint, the moves seemed natural.  Unlike Chris, I was very lucky in the fact that I never fell in the last crux on redpoint.  The redpoint crux for me it turns out was the hard moves in the pin scars.  Either way, the route was really hard for me.  Whether or not I fell on the same moves as any other climber has very little relevance.  In total, I probably spent over 8 days trying the route.  Although my redpoint burn felt easier than any other time, I do agree that the route deserves the grade of 5.14d (9a).  This route took me longer than any other route that I’ve done.  I also feel that I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in route climbing after competing on the World Cup circuit in Europe this whole summer."

Sean McColl

More info on Sean McColl's blog

Check out the Petzl Millau Roctrip film, featuring the 90m Infinity Lane routes... 17 minutes of amazing climbing to get you psyched!
For more infos about the movie, photos, wallpapers... Please visit the Petzl website.

Chris Sharma flashed the Men's Infinity Lane Saturday 27th, June, during the Petzl Roctrip in Millau (Aveyron - France).

This 100m route approaching the 8c has resist to the others competitors (Dani Andrada, Daniel Dulac, Tony Lamiche, Steve McClure, Sean McColl, Mickaël Fuselier...) but Chris spent all his energy in one attempt and flashed the route in a raw!

Here are some testimonies from the Petzl team, catched during the Melloblocco bouldering event in Italy (Val Di Mello).