ESCALADA - Jorge CamposSeptember 2, 2007 We ate like kings. Like Swedish kings no less. Oh yes we did. Leila had thrown her once-yearly crayfish dinner and we had consumed crustaceans, tossed back schnapps and sung like Helsinki's drunkest students at the anniversary ball. It was really a lot of fun. In the morning our trash smelt like an unwashed prawn trawler, but hey it's all good. Heaving the stinking mess outside was a little less fun. Talk about your red terror. Jorge picked me up around a quarter to ten and we headed through town to pick up Regula. Once she was in the truck we roared off down the highway towards Glarus. Along the way Lara and Martijn overtook us before we even got to the end of the big lake. Our target for the day was the Schwandital which is a hanging valley above Naefels, on the right side is the great Bruggler wall. We pulled in to the carpark about twenty minutes behind the ever patient L&M. We sorted our gear, paid for parking and then slogged in the last fifty minutes on foot.
At the base of the wall we could see that there were about half a dozen parties up there already on various lines. Lara and Martijn scouted for a route they thought would be interesting for them. Jorge and Regula waited for me to stop gasping for breath and tell them what I had picked out for us. It was going to be the same as the one I did with Carsten and Stine back in 2005 - Weinachtsroute (4c). We left L&M prepping for their climb, they were always going to be much faster than us, so we more or less said sayanora right there. Finding the start was easy, they have a little plaque nailed up to the start with Weinachtsroute stamped on it now. Jorge and Regula asked me for the plan and I told them the expected sequence. I would take pitches one (4b) and three (4c), Jorge could do 2 (4a) and 4 (4c), and Regula could take pitch five (3b) if she wanted it. I remember that back in 2005 Carsten had taken, and used, cams on every pitch. I also remembered that there were usually only a couple of bolts between belay stations. Good thing I was only going to have to lead maybe two or three pitches - runouts really mess with my head. So full of vim, viv and vigour I fired up pitch one. The first bolt was at about twenty nine thousand feet but I reached it without needing bottled oxygen. Take that Messner you poser! Ok, ok, I'm over blowing things a bit - but for once I went up there like I knew what I was doing. Of course the very end reminded me that I am, in fact, a mug. There's this ancient tree, some sort of pine I think, growing out of a big crack right at the end of the pitch. It's all twisted and gnarled, and incredibly smooth on the bit everybody stands on when they belay for the next section. Upon the polished pine I struggled, pulled and flailed trying to bridge the gap between the last decent foothold on earth and heaven (as represented by the end of the goddamn pitch). Undignified does not quite describe the situation, but I did eventually get up on top of it. Boy was I glad Jorge was taking the next pitch. Jorge came up after me, trailing Regula's rope. He seemed fine, amazingly fine in fact, for a guy who hadn't got to sleep until 4am that morning (Jorge had been trapped by some women in a bar the night before, they plied him with wine, beer and their sultry ways before he could escape their clutches and creep home, allegedly alone). I told Jorge that the stance was too small for three and he would have to head up the next pitch right away. He gave me a funny look. I dont know what it was. Whether the shenanigans of the night before had left him too fagged to deal with his first big wall, or if he realized that he could count most of the bolts on a pitch using only his thumbs, or if he was not confident about using cams in a really deliberate fashion. Whatever was going through his mind it made a decision for him on the way. He said that he wasn't going to be doing any leading. Oh. I thought. This was followed by slight disorientation. Jorge was my gun climber. He was my get out of jail free card. I had whipped him up a bunch of walls by this stage and he had conquered with nary a backward glance just about every one of them. He was my guarantee we weren't going to be having any trouble on this climb. My logic was fairly sound - after all there was nothing harder than a 4c to do. It was a somewhat worrying development. However, I thought, perhaps after another pitch he will come round. That gave me a bit of hope. Ok, the next pitch is an easy 4a - I can do that.
I called down to Regula that she was going to have to wait a bit longer. Then I did three of the longest run-outs I have done for quite some time. You have to understand that I had grown used to considering a gap of four metres between two bolts as being a bit nerve-wracking. I clipped the first bolt after about twelve metres, placed a cam another dozen metres higher and then went to the end of the pitch. Brilliant hand holds all the way made the difference, it was just a matter of finding them. I got up to the stance, which was big enough for a wedding party, and heaved a sigh of relief. I set up the anchor and told Jorge he could start bringing up Regula. After a long time Jorge called up that he was ready to climb up to me. He came up fairly quickly. I asked him how he was feeling and he said he was fine, he really liked the view. But he was very happy with not leading. Ok, maybe Regula will do a bit of leading for me. Nope. She told me herself, rather emphatically as Jorge belayed her up to the top of pitch two, that she would not be doing any leading. Runouts too long, not enough bolts, etc. Bloody hell. Well, we were two pitches up a five pitch line. A very small part of me was whispering to rap everyone back down. If these two were too nervous to lead then perhaps we shouldn't be there. I hadn't planned on leading the whole thing. I asked Jorge how he was feeling again. He said he was ok. So was Regula. They weren't worried, they just weren't leading. Since nobody else was wavering over the general plan of continuing up I figured that we could just take a see-how-she-goes approach. Pitch three was ok, not as hard as I had thought it might be at 4c. It had four closely spaced bolts at the start covering the thoughtful stretch. Actually this was a lot of fun. I crept a long way up a tightening chute before slinging an old tree root and heaving up to the end of the pitch. That felt really good, I remember when Carsten led this last time. He must have been a tiny bit bored. After the others joined me I was already psyching for the next pitch. I remembered it pretty well, the only tricky bit was early on in a high steep corner. In 2005 I cheated a bit by going around to the left on an easier line, clipping the bolts from the side. I did exactly the same thing this time round. The rest was a doddle, fun too, and the next belay station came up fast. The runouts weren't bothering me and I was getting back into the habit of finding easy placements for the cams. It was getting late. As a group of three we were never going to do this route in record time. I wondered where Lara and Martijn were. They must have been finished by now. I could see the stubli down in the valley. Martijn said that they would wait there for a while. As I belayed up first Jorge and then Regula I stared down into the valley, trying to pick out a couple of familiar form. One pitch to go, easy as pie. Just a 3b with a little bit of exposure. We were up to around 150 metres above the start by now. The view was incredible and I lingered a while, sorting ropes and talking with the others about the traverse we had to do before going up to the top. The contrast to how I was feeling two weeks ago on Pizol was amazing. I didn't feel like giving away climbing today. That last pitch went very easily indeed. Two bolts, one cam and an alien reduced the runouts to nearly nothing. The setting sun cast great long shadows into the valley below, but it shone warmly high on the wall. Creeping up over the top of the Bruggler felt really good. The descent sucked majorly. I never want to do that damned walk off again. Too slippery and too bloody dangerous by half.
September 2, 2007 We ate like kings. Like Swedish kings no less. Oh yes we did. Leila had thrown her once-yearly crayfish dinner and we had consumed crustaceans, tossed back schnapps and sung like Helsinki's drunkest students at the anniversary ball. It was really a lot of fun. In the morning our trash smelt like an unwashed prawn trawler, but hey it's all good. Heaving the stinking mess outside was a little less fun. Talk about your red terror. Jorge picked me up around a quarter to ten and we headed through town to pick up Regula. Once she was in the truck we roared off down the highway towards Glarus. Along the way Lara and Martijn overtook us before we even got to the end of the big lake. Our target for the day was the Schwandital which is a hanging valley above Naefels, on the right side is the great Bruggler wall. We pulled in to the carpark about twenty minutes behind the ever patient L&M. We sorted our gear, paid for parking and then slogged in the last fifty minutes on foot.
At the base of the wall we could see that there were about half a dozen parties up there already on various lines. Lara and Martijn scouted for a route they thought would be interesting for them. Jorge and Regula waited for me to stop gasping for breath and tell them what I had picked out for us. It was going to be the same as the one I did with Carsten and Stine back in 2005 - Weinachtsroute (4c). We left L&M prepping for their climb, they were always going to be much faster than us, so we more or less said sayanora right there. Finding the start was easy, they have a little plaque nailed up to the start with Weinachtsroute stamped on it now. Jorge and Regula asked me for the plan and I told them the expected sequence. I would take pitches one (4b) and three (4c), Jorge could do 2 (4a) and 4 (4c), and Regula could take pitch five (3b) if she wanted it. I remember that back in 2005 Carsten had taken, and used, cams on every pitch. I also remembered that there were usually only a couple of bolts between belay stations. Good thing I was only going to have to lead maybe two or three pitches - runouts really mess with my head. So full of vim, viv and vigour I fired up pitch one. The first bolt was at about twenty nine thousand feet but I reached it without needing bottled oxygen. Take that Messner you poser! Ok, ok, I'm over blowing things a bit - but for once I went up there like I knew what I was doing. Of course the very end reminded me that I am, in fact, a mug. There's this ancient tree, some sort of pine I think, growing out of a big crack right at the end of the pitch. It's all twisted and gnarled, and incredibly smooth on the bit everybody stands on when they belay for the next section. Upon the polished pine I struggled, pulled and flailed trying to bridge the gap between the last decent foothold on earth and heaven (as represented by the end of the goddamn pitch). Undignified does not quite describe the situation, but I did eventually get up on top of it. Boy was I glad Jorge was taking the next pitch. Jorge came up after me, trailing Regula's rope. He seemed fine, amazingly fine in fact, for a guy who hadn't got to sleep until 4am that morning (Jorge had been trapped by some women in a bar the night before, they plied him with wine, beer and their sultry ways before he could escape their clutches and creep home, allegedly alone). I told Jorge that the stance was too small for three and he would have to head up the next pitch right away. He gave me a funny look. I dont know what it was. Whether the shenanigans of the night before had left him too fagged to deal with his first big wall, or if he realized that he could count most of the bolts on a pitch using only his thumbs, or if he was not confident about using cams in a really deliberate fashion. Whatever was going through his mind it made a decision for him on the way. He said that he wasn't going to be doing any leading. Oh. I thought. This was followed by slight disorientation. Jorge was my gun climber. He was my get out of jail free card. I had whipped him up a bunch of walls by this stage and he had conquered with nary a backward glance just about every one of them. He was my guarantee we weren't going to be having any trouble on this climb. My logic was fairly sound - after all there was nothing harder than a 4c to do. It was a somewhat worrying development. However, I thought, perhaps after another pitch he will come round. That gave me a bit of hope. Ok, the next pitch is an easy 4a - I can do that. I called down to Regula that she was going to have to wait a bit longer. Then I did three of the longest run-outs I have done for quite some time. You have to understand that I had grown used to considering a gap of four metres between two bolts as being a bit nerve-wracking. I clipped the first bolt after about twelve metres, placed a cam another dozen metres higher and then went to the end of the pitch. Brilliant hand holds all the way made the difference, it was just a matter of finding them. I got up to the stance, which was big enough for a wedding party, and heaved a sigh of relief. I set up the anchor and told Jorge he could start bringing up Regula. After a long time Jorge called up that he was ready to climb up to me. He came up fairly quickly. I asked him how he was feeling and he said he was fine, he really liked the view. But he was very happy with not leading. Ok, maybe Regula will do a bit of leading for me. Nope. She told me herself, rather emphatically as Jorge belayed her up to the top of pitch two, that she would not be doing any leading. Runouts too long, not enough bolts, etc. Bloody hell. Well, we were two pitches up a five pitch line. A very small part of me was whispering to rap everyone back down. If these two were too nervous to lead then perhaps we shouldn't be there. I hadn't planned on leading the whole thing. I asked Jorge how he was feeling again. He said he was ok. So was Regula. They weren't worried, they just weren't leading. Since nobody else was wavering over the general plan of continuing up I figured that we could just take a see-how-she-goes approach. Pitch three was ok, not as hard as I had thought it might be at 4c. It had four closely spaced bolts at the start covering the thoughtful stretch. Actually this was a lot of fun. I crept a long way up a tightening chute before slinging an old tree root and heaving up to the end of the pitch. That felt really good, I remember when Carsten led this last time. He must have been a tiny bit bored. After the others joined me I was already psyching for the next pitch. I remembered it pretty well, the only tricky bit was early on in a high steep corner. In 2005 I cheated a bit by going around to the left on an easier line, clipping the bolts from the side. I did exactly the same thing this time round. The rest was a doddle, fun too, and the next belay station came up fast. The runouts weren't bothering me and I was getting back into the habit of finding easy placements for the cams. It was getting late. As a group of three we were never going to do this route in record time. I wondered where Lara and Martijn were. They must have been finished by now. I could see the stubli down in the valley. Martijn said that they would wait there for a while. As I belayed up first Jorge and then Regula I stared down into the valley, trying to pick out a couple of familiar form. One pitch to go, easy as pie. Just a 3b with a little bit of exposure. We were up to around 150 metres above the start by now. The view was incredible and I lingered a while, sorting ropes and talking with the others about the traverse we had to do before going up to the top. The contrast to how I was feeling two weeks ago on Pizol was amazing. I didn't feel like giving away climbing today. That last pitch went very easily indeed. Two bolts, one cam and an alien reduced the runouts to nearly nothing. The setting sun cast great long shadows into the valley below, but it shone warmly high on the wall. Creeping up over the top of the Bruggler felt really good. images/The descent sucked majorly. I never want to do that damned walk off again. Too slippery and too bloody dangerous by half.
Original da notícia com fotos - CLIC: http://www.haskell.org/keith/2007/bruggler.html
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