Albarracin

Ok. I`m in Albaracin. The spanish bouldermekka with tons of red sandstone ready to eat all your skin... no matter if it is your fingertips, handpalm or forearm.
Going back bouldering after some month ropeclimbing fells good. The start was a bit hard. The question after the first days was always: "Power where are you?".

dirty hippies

My plan was to get a bit stronger again. So I just went into the boulderareas located in the forest of Albarracin. I had no special lines in mind. Running around in the forest like a little child  with a friendly guy named Johannes, a guidebook, some crashpads, food and the ambition to try many boulders. It worked. Almost around every tree you can find a new line which can be climbed. Tons of boulders. We spent the first days bouldering in different areas to see a lot of the forest and to get used to bouldering again.

we both had no plan.

playing around

 Wake up early in the morning, breakfast, warm up, climb up a bloc, jump down a bloc, grap our stuff and move to the next one, on and on, headtorch on and walk back to the carpark. Really simple and good!
After 5 days of bouldering I could tick 40 problems from 7A to 7C.

I had no special line in mind before, but when I came to here I had one last wish for my trip. "Is it possible to boulder 8A on this trip?" So I always took a look at 8A boulders. Not really trying hard, but trying to understand the moves and hoping to get motivated to try hard.
One line in knew before was "el varano" an 8A from Toni Lamprecht. Big overhanging prow with big moves. Climb-it-like-you-carry-a-fridge-climbingstyle. Maybe it suits me! The problem is that you need some spotters and some pads to protect the rocks under the line. One day I went there with Moritz, Johannes and Julia. Moritz wanted to try it. I wasn`t really motivated to try it, because I was tired and I wasn`t really motivated to try it, because it would mean to spent many sessions there changing my mood between: crying, happy, angry, friendly, I-will-kill-everyone, laying on the crashpad, laying between the crashpads, laying under the crashpads, bowling with my spotters, hungry, no skin on the fingertips.... and so on.

autumn

 But it turned out that Moritz made me really motivated to try hard. We had no beta for the moves but worked the whole boulder pretty quick. All the moves done except one. Not bad, but we had our doubts if it was possible to do that move, because we had no idea how to hold the swing if your feet have to cut loose.

After a restday, we went there again. Not really motivated, to many delicious chocolate napolitanas for breakfast , falling of warming up on 5+ boulders and almost falling asleep if we took a rest.

best breakfast, best lunch, best dinner --> Napolitana

 Back on el varano we tried different solutions for the moves. which was funny, becaue we found 3 or 4 different ways to get to a certain hold, but it was impossible to move from there in a save way. Almost giving up Moritz did some last tries and suddenly he stuck the move... not really technical, but he did it. We both found new hope to climb the boulder. After a rest I worked the move again. For me the crucial point was to catch a crimp with my left hand perfect. Never did it before. In case of hitting it perfect I had to bring up my right foot on a good hold in the overhang, span out to the right, change my left foot from heel-hook to toe-hook and just swing out.Like I said, I never did the seqeunce before, always falling of because my left hand couldn`t hold the crimp.
One go I hit the crimp perfect and without any doubts in my mind I did the swing out move and after bringing my feet back to the rock I had so much positiv energy that it was impossible for me to fall down again. Topping out with out expecting it so quick feels great. Climbed my first 8A boulder.

"el varano" photo: Moritz Eisenlauer

 After climbing down I felt light. Everything turned out to be good. I felt fresh, not tired at all, a bit hungry (like always), happy and smiled. 
Moritz couldn`t climb it that day, but 2 days later he did it without any hestistation after warming up.

The fact that I wasn`t tired, happy and that I felt strong enough to go on to another project, that I worked out the last days, was for sure good.
Moritz wanted to climb "Zarzaparilla" 8B which is kind of an extension of "Zarzamora" 8A which I wanted to try again.
Guess what happend... One hour later, we put down the crashpads, brushed the holds and even before Moritz could put on his shoes I could stick the moves and top out my second 8A boulder... strange things happen.

"Zarzamora sit" photo: Moritz Eisenlauer

Furthermore I could climb "Zatochi" 8A (maybe more 7C+ for my size) after a restday. Strange things happen and finally all the work in the bouldergym in winter paid off!

Thanks to Johannes, Moritz, Julia and Matthias for the nice time bouldering in Albarracin.

they taste really good!

2 more climbing days and then it`s time to move to Siurana, but before I have to pick up Koen from the airport. Let`s see what happens.