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]

Gritstone Ice

[caption id="attachment_432" align="aligncenter" width="607" caption="Climbing a very rarely formed ice pillar on Gritstoneberget outside Stockholm. December 14th. Photo: Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

Southward bound

For some reason I'm really psyched about the winter that has arrived way too early and actually pretty exited that the ice is building rapidly. I never thought that I would care much for ice climbing other than as a substitute for proper climbing but it seems I was dead wrong. I’ve really been looking forward to this season. And what seems even more alarming is that I seem to have got all caught up in the alpine game and the other day I bought tickets to Buenos Aires with El Chalten in Patagonia as the final destination. One month of alpine climbing or at least the chance to do some of it if weather provides an opportunity. How did this happen? Ok, I've always enjoyed long routes in the mountains every now and then and been on a few trips to Greenland for example, but that's mainly been long rock routes with some alpine approaches. But this? Now I'm actually looking forward to climbing some icy couloirs and chopping ice out of cracks. Naïve probably!

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="619" caption="The hills outside Antalya"][/caption]

Now we, Sofia and I that is, just spent a week in Geyikbayiri in Mediterranean Turkey. This was our first trip together without kids since we had any at all and it was a holiday for sure! One week of limestone sports climbing on sick karst formations in beautiful settings, nice and perfect temps and more or less full board lodging, as far from dirt bagging you can imagine. So good! Climbing in and around the caves offers varied and three dimensional climbing on mostly tufa formations and a lot of the routes we climbed were 35m+. We rented a cabin at JoSiTo’s campground which served pretty decent food as well. For breakfast there where various options such as Scrambled eggs or fruit salad and dinners where rather huge portions of home made cross over cuisine. In short, a perfect holiday destination.

[caption id="attachment_421" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Goat."][/caption]

 We also got the opportunity to take a rest day and go into Antalya and paid a visit to a 600 year old Hammam, a Turkish bath house, or spa if you prefer. What could possibly be better than getting scrubbed by a big hairy Turkish man? The experience was definitely worth the money. The rest of the day was spent in the old town drinking freshly squeezed orange and pomegranade juice and, checking out turkish fast food and haggling. A part from that Antalya wasn't quite my cup of tea.

Summing the climbing all up I think it’s a long time since I climbed so well, consistently on sighting nearly everything that came in my way and feeling a playful ease while climbing. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been climbing a lot and training a fair bit, if it’s because this type of climbing suites me, if the ratings are a tad soft or just because I simply didn’t really care if I would fail. Never the less it was fun to boost the ego a bit. Sof flashed 7c and 7b+ and I managed to do 15 routes betwwen 7c and 8a on sight  (10/11 7c,  3/4 7c+ and 1/7 8a) in five days of climbing. I didn’t try one single route twice. Now it’s time to get fit for Patagonia. Bombah!

[caption id="attachment_422" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Morning yoga on the porch."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_443" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Crag dogs"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_444" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Sofia climbing in to the mist at Sarkit"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_446" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Olli Petteri Manni"][/caption]

Autumn Pix.

Days are definately getting shorter and the sun hardly gets to dry up the rock in between showers and snow. One sunny day last week I just had to escape from work for a few hours to do a couple of routes out on Dyviksudde, a classic crag on the Tyresö peninsula outside Stockholm. Erik Lindvall joined me to take advantage of the beautiful day.

[caption id="attachment_299" align="aligncenter" width="607" caption="Apunkalyps Ph: Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_298" align="aligncenter" width="607" caption="Autumn at Dyviksudde. Ph: Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

Spring pics and a vid from Åland

[caption id="attachment_309" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Daniel Andersson on Tomi\'s Roof. Photo by Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

This spring Daniel Andersson, Erik Lindvall and I went over to the Åland archipelago in the Baltic sea, between Sweden and Finland, for a weekend of bouldering and posing. Here are a couple of shots and a vid from the trip.



Daniel Andersson DoDo Åland from Erik Lindvall on Vimeo.

[caption id="attachment_323" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Playing with the light on Voodoo. Photo by Erik Lindvall."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_308" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Having a hit of Kali Mist. Photo By Erik Lindvall. eriklindvall.se"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_322" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Trying to unsolve the mysteries of Drakguld. Photo by Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_312" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Tomi's Roof. Photo by Erik Lindvall."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_307" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Ph: Erik Lindvall, eriklindvall.se"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_310" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Swedish Burrito, \"the tunnbrörulle\" Photo by Erik Lindvall"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_311" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Swedish burrito, \"the tunnbrörulle\" with potato salad, Bengans Beef and some lingon berry garnish Photo by Erik Lindvall."][/caption]


See more of Erik Lindvalls work at http://eriklindvall.se.