Off to Russia

Its been a very busy three weeks since I came home from Romania. I have a full Korea post almost done that I'll be posting soon but haven't made time to finish. Hopefully all the layovers on this trip will be productive and I can finish up the full post for the other countries as well.

I'm on my on my way to Russia!

Romania

Its been a while since my last update. Posting from my phone became more and more problematic until it just wasn't happening. I have been in Romania for a few days now. I climbed on Thurs. night in the preliminaries. I was 49th out of 49 to climb which meant over 6 hours in isolation. Fortunately we got there early and I was able to get a mat on the floor to stretch out on and pretend to sleep for a good part of it. The warmup wall in isolation was the best yet on the tour. For once I felt like I got a good warm-up and didn't need to wreck my picks to do so.

My climbing was over disappointingly quick. I'm pretty happy with how I climbed right up to the point that my tool skated off the hold. Unfortunately in competing there are no second chances once you come off.

I'm looking forward to Russia. Hopefully in the three weeks between now and then I can lose some of the weight I gained and gain back some of the fitness I lost while sitting around idle when traveling.

I'd like to thank Rankin Construction, the Toronto Section of the Alpine Club of Canada, True North Climbing gym, Gripped Magazine and all my family and friends, and especially my wife Rebecca who have been supporting me through all this. Without all the help I could never be doing this.

korea to europe

after traveling for what seemed like days I we arrived in Europe. We rented a car in Geneva and drove to Chamonix in France. The next day we were lucky enough to be able to do some training on the world cup structure in France. This was an off year and there is no comp in France for this tour.

The amount of time we get to climb on these structures in competition is very small so it wss a very valuable experience. The countries who do well in the WC usually have access to a strctuter to climb on regularily.

Yesterday we spent climbing in a huge cave called L'Usine, which means factory. The setting was a bit industrial, but the climbing was amazing. The routes were mind blowingly steep, and they went on forever. It was good to get some hard climbing in. It feels like we have barely been able to climb on this trip and its a bit of a mind game between being tired and feeling like you are losing fitness from a lck of climbing.

Today we go to Saas Fee. We compete tomorrow morning.

Sleepless in Seoul

The Korean leg pf my trip is coming to an end. Its 1:30am and we are on a bus to the airport. After spending the night in the airport we will be flying to Geneva. Leaving in about 10 hours from now.

The comp was a little bit of a disappointment for me. I fell off very unexpectedly  in the prelims and placed somewhere near the middle of the group of 61 men. Hopefully its just part of the learning curve. One of the Italians complimented me on my climbing so I'm taking that as a sign that I am doing okay. Saas Fee will be a new day and a new chance to improve performance.

Jen did a great write up so rather than battle with posting from my phone here is a link.

http://jennifercaye.wordpress.com/

I.m having crazy amounts of trouble posting with my. Phone.

We are on a bus to Cheongsong and will be competing in the AM.

A lot of the better climbing shots are on my camera so I'll have to do a trip overview when I get home.

Let the games begin!

Add capTowangsong Falls. You can see someone on the lower tier.

We are back on Seoul, and ready to go compete! Jen an I had a fun time in Sokcho. We mostly played tourist but yestrday we climbed a 320m water fall. itwas a pretty big day,especially considering that we didn't get started hiking in until around 10am. We had toget permits first and the office didn't open until 9am. Aftersecuring our permit it was a 2+ hour hike to the base.

waiting for our permit

On the way in we could see the party ahead of us topping out the first tier. As it turned out there were three parties. we caught up to them pretty quickly at tje second tier. While belaying jen up the 1st pitch I had a good sized hunk of ice hit me in the knee. It made climing and hiking out misserable, but its feeling a lot better now.

After catching up with the other 3 parties at the base of the upper tier we had to consider our options. Jen wasn't keen on the idea of climbing under anyone so i took that part as well. I hit the end of my rope arond the same time ghe others did and Jen got to lead the last pitch to the top. The sun was setting when we topped out. It waz pretty dark for the last two rappels.

Right now we

Korea!

We made it safely to Korea and are doing pretty good. Before leaving I got to get in a couple more good days of training. I did one day with Jen and Malcolm and the second day at Haffner with Rebecca. Im pretty excited because even though I was tired from the two prevoius days of climbing on my third day I was able to do Caveman, Neolithic, Fire Rosted, and another lap on Caveman in pretty quick order after having a great morning in lower HFfner climbing with Bec.

on the subway headed to Soccho

Today we are on a bus headed to Sokcho near the east coast. We are hoping to do some climbing in a national park there. We had planned to rent a car, but Were unable to. Fortunenately the public transit is really good here.