Underground activities

Tsunami. Photo: Jörgen Sölander

This weekend started out with a trip back to the silver mines outside Sala to climb with my friend Stefan Lindblom. Sala is located 20 km north of my home town Västerås and is most known for the mining which today the  has ceased and given place to slightly more recreational exploits. Over 400 tons of silver where excavated from the mines that where in use between the 1400s till 1908 and where for a period the most importand mining site in Sweden.  Over the past decade Stefan has put a huge amount of effort in to developing the ice and mixed climbing in the old mine holes resulting in some of the hardest graded mix routes in the country.  Started off the day by on sighting and thus making the first repeat of  Thurneman, a dicey and technincal mixed line. Stefan added a new route, Den magiska cirkeln, which involved quite technical climbing as well as a thuggy finnish around a roof on to the ice. I got the honor to repeat it and did so first go. I also got the opportunity to try his test piece Tsunami again and managed to send it this time, first try, pulling off the first repeat of this burl fest. 

[caption id="attachment_526" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="Ph: Stefan Lindblom"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="Ph: Stefan Lindblom"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_527" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="Onsighting Thurneman in the old silver mines outside Sala. Photo Stefan Lindblom"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_525" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption="Stefan Lindblom making the first ascent of "Den Magiska Cirkeln". Sala."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_524" align="aligncenter" width="426" caption=""Den Magiska Cirkeln" Photo: Stefan Lindblom"][/caption]

 

 

Winter holidays and a New Year

The last weeks have been spent exploring the ever so exellent winter conditions of the local crags and doing loads of cross country skiing mixed up with some milage climbing indoors, crossfit training and a couple of pathetic efforts of bouldering. The bouldering part doesn't really bother me part from it sucks beeing even weaker than normal. Despite that I figure I'm about three times as strong as i need to be for Patagonia.

During christmas I got the opportunity to join my old maestro Stefan Lindblom to the old silver mines outside Sala where he has established heaps of ice and mixed lines. The setting is wicked cool and I got to climb a few of Stefans dry tooling test pieces. I also ha a good burn on his route Tsunami, an unrepeated thug fest. Even though I think drilling hook placements is quite lame I must admit that that the climbing is fun. Considering that its on quarried rock I quess one can live with it. We also went down to Ågelsjön again and Stefan and I, as well as climbing the ever so fat lines on the main wall both repeated Peter Värvels old M8 on the lake cliff . I flashed it with preplaced gear, not the best of styles but it just worked out that way. Any how a way cool line that deserves more traffic. Big ups to Peter for leading the way of this kind of climbing more than 10 years ago and to climb it on natural pro.

Thanks again to my ever so trigger happy friend Erik Lindvall for sending me these photos from our day out last week at Uddudde with Måns Berg.

Gallery

Ågelsjön

[caption id="attachment_462" align="aligncenter" width="567" caption="Stora Fallet, Ågelsjön, December 18th. Photo: Patrik Lindkvist"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_463" align="aligncenter" width="567" caption="Ph: Patrik Lindkvist"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_464" align="aligncenter" width="567" caption="Ph: Patrik Lindkvist"][/caption]