The past week was full of rain. After one day in Buandik where I tried my steep project together with my brother Jochen I found a good solution for how to do the single moves. I’ve solved the puzzle of the rock and only need to link all the moves together another day.
Then we drove back towards the Campground Boulders where Jochen had his big project (see last post). After falling twice at the top moves (scary fall, but he didn’t die ;)) the send it! In the Guidebook it is called the Scorpion King Project, but asking Google, we learned the First Ascent happened 12 years ago. Now it’s the „Scorpion King“, V13. Hard, scary and beautiful!
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| Jochen Perschmann in „Scorpion King“, V13 |
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| Jochen Perschmann in „Scorpion King“, V13 |
After a few days of bad conditions and rainshowers every now and then we had a really windy day yesterday. We were not quite sure if it’s worth driving all the way from Horsham to Buandik (80km) or if it would be a better idea to climb in the Arapiles (30km) for an easy day of climbing classics. But we decided to give it a try and it payed of!
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| A double Kangaroo in Halls Gap, Grampians |
After warming up, Katinka could climb „Hillary Step“, V9 in her first Attempt of the day and so we continued to my project. It was absolutely dry and stunning conditions. The pads were about to fly away due to the strong wind, but fixed with heavy stones on the crashpads corners they stayed were they were supposed to stay. I warmed up and worked the moves again and again before starting to link them. Finally I fell twice at the last move, a dyno to a big jug where your feet swing out, before I did it.
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| Katinka in „Hillary Step“, V9 – Buandik, Grampians |
„Simplicity“ i named it, but business is not over yet. I still have to return and try to climb the sitstart, as I started on the last move of the old V7 version, which makes it a obvious standstart. After beeing really tired I postphoned this mission to another day and tried „Roobik’s Cube“, V12 again. I managed to do the hardest move as a singlemove and almost sticked the move starting in the middle of the boulder.
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| Katinka on the last move of „Simplicity“, V7 – the extended version might be V12 |
I think both boulders feel about same hard, but for a correct grading I have to wait for repetitors of „Simplicity“ and for the full line to be completed. Due to the strong wind we had to postphone the photosession. It was impossible to leave Finja on the ground without watching her, since there was a lot of sand flying into her eyes. Hopefully next time up there, it’s a bit more comfortable. 😉
Now it’s only two days until Finja is one year old!