zaterdag 29 oktober 2016

Vienna and expedition academy

After the great vibe at the world championships in Paris, training was on! I moved for my internship to Vienna, which made that I was not able to compete in the last two qualifications for the national championships. Luckily, with climbed only one of the four qualifications, I managed to qualify for the nationals! If you haven't done already, mark the 10th of December in your agenda and be there :D.

Lead 2
The start of the final route during the second qualification

Without having any competitions here in Vienna, I could focus entirely on training. However, in a new city it takes some time and effort before knowing where to go and finding climbing partners. So far I have been in four climbing gyms (of the five Vienna counts). Two of these are pretty close to the university, but unfortunately these are the shitty gyms. Good enough to do a strength training, not sufficient for a good power endurance session or just fun route climbing. The other two gyms are really nice, but pretty far from both my home (close to where I live is nothing but hills, which are great for running). So beside training for climbing, I have been training for cycling as well in order to get at the climbing gyms.
Despite that the climbing here is so far a bit disappointing, I am really enjoying my time in Vienna. The internship I am doing is at the university, in a research about (in short) the influence of biomass on landslides. My specific subject within this research is the influence of the roots. For this, we excavated two trees in the region of Vorarlberg and measured the whole rootsystem. From this I made a 3D model. Now I am working on statistical analyses of several root characteristics to see if there is a relation between these characteristics and if relations could be influenced by the slope (and vice versa: what the influence of the roots are on the slope stability and thus on landslides). I am learning a lot about many different subjects and programs, which makes this research (at least for me) very interesting.

Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna

As it seems to be impossible for me to stay for a longer period than a few weeks in one place, I went to Orco a week ago for the selection week of the expedition academy of the NKBV. It felt incredibly good to be in the mountains and climb some rocks again, and the granite/gneiss rocks of Orco felt like a heaven. In the beginning I piazzed all the cracks which took quite some effort. During the week I learned how to jam, and at the end of the week I enthusiastically jammed my way up. Besides learning how to jam, I slept in a portaledge, learned how to aid climb climbed many beautiful routes and had great fun with the group. And the nice thing is: I am selected for the expedition academy! This means that the coming two years I will learn all the different aspects of mountaineering and get to know all the ins and outs of an expedition. We will finish these two years with organizing our own expedition. Already looking forward to it!

fissura pannetonne 6c+, photo by Carlo

Noel getting ready for a night sleeping in a portaledge

Line in Fessura della Disperazione 6b

Me, Carlo and Noel on top of Cornflakes 6c