Friday 19 August 2011

Norway Day 3



Julia exploring granite boulders, Blammanen. All pics by Paul Diffley/Hot Aches. Paul's uploaded a nice gallery of pics to the Gore-Tex facebook page.




Helena enjoying warm sunshine and cool shade in Ersfjord




Julia working Ramadan, 8a, Ersfjord




Today we are resting sore fingers from the Ersfjord granite in Norway, for a morning at least. Later, I’m off for a proper explore of the faces and boulders above Ersfjord itself. Things have been going up and down here over the past 2 days, as is normal for the business of looking for hard new routes. We were doing well on a route on Blammanen and I was getting most excited. But some logistical problems made us realise it would be difficult to do it safely in the time we have here. So yesterday we went to another venue.
Straight away I saw a great line to start working on, and after a couple of hours on it, had done the moves. It’s a 70 metre pitch and a difficult crux after 30 metres. I think it’ll take a little time, and some better conditions. 
I’ve never been great at climbing granite, since there isn’t much steep granite in Scotland. But I’ve definitely learnt a lot in the past 4 days, and I’m eager to put it to good use. Last night was quite hard work as it was unexpectedly hot and humid. Not what I was expecting from this trip I must say. A lot of skin was lost from the team’s fingertips. Tomorrow, maybe we look at somewhere different again.
I think all of us are getting into the flow of the climbing here.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Dave!
    Wow, looks from the pics on facebook that you got your fingers onto the extension of Fidel, that I bolted 5 years ago. It gives me great pleasure to finally see someone trying, and hopefully sending, this magnificent line! To my knowledge it's only been briefly tried once by local young ace Eirik Olsen, then basically never had any chalk on it. However, I've been thinking about this line over the years, and it occurs to me that there might be a way of climbing straight up the arete from the first anchor, insteading of going left in order to reach the upper crack system, thus avoiding the very thin section where the bolts are now. Please feel free to move the bolts around if that seems like a better option to you.
    It also looks like you're having great luck with the weather (as I had myself this year). Hope you guys are all having a good time. The whole area is just awesome. Enjoy your trip and good luck! Cheers! Øystein.

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