Author: <span class="vcard">Anders Strange Nielsen</span>

Pizza and Cogne Ice

The original plan was to go to Chamonix for some skiing and perhaps some alpine climbing. I had arranged to hook up with French photographer Alexandre Buisse who used to live here in Copenhagen, from where have had  several good trips for ice and rock climbing in Sweden. Alex had recently moved to Chamonix to start his photo business. It would be great to share some adventures with him again, but Alex had been having an epic with an unplanned bivouac on Les Courtes. This had given him some frostbitten toes (luckily not to serious) so he was out of the game.

I had almost given up on any trips when I got an offer from my old climbing friends to join them for a long weekend ice climbing in Cogne, Italy.

After a long drive Wednesday night we arrived in the picturesque town of Cogne on Thursday. Ice conditions where brilliant and the following three days we did all kind of routes. One of the highlights of the tour was the Lillaz Gully, that I did with Anders HP. The Liliaz Gully is a fun 200 meter long gully that can best be described as an Italian version of the classic Scotch ‘Point Five Gully’ with fun ice and mixed climbing.

I am getting to old for this shit
Me battling the spindrift in Lillaz Gully (TD-,WI4,M4+, 200m) – Photo by Anders HP

Cogne is a fantastic place to climb ice in extremely pleasant surroundings with the mountain of Grand Paradiso close by. As the gallery shows I had a marvelous three days with good friends, good climbing and good Italian food!

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Impressions from DM i Bouldering 2011

These are my random impressions from DM i Bouldering 2011. The event was held at DTU in Lyngby and I decided to drop by with a camera. Just shooting what I saw.

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Searching For Magic – Episode One

As a part of my recent trip to Fontainebleau I wanted to see if it is true that the forest is really a magical place. We all know that in order to discover magic you need to open your senses and take a slow considered approach. I thus decided to shoot analogue Black & White for two weeks. I came home with 5 rolls of exposed B/W Kodak TriX 400 and a two medium format colour rolls.

I am very relived to announce that there is a positive indication that magic is in fact to be found in the forest!

Please enjoy the first episode of ‘Searching for Magic’

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Cima Grande, Via Comici (ED-,VII+, 6b+, 550m)

I had the pleasure of climbing in Italy during the first weekend of September. I had made arrangements with Paolo who I had met during the trad climb meeting in Valle Orco last year. Our original plan was to do the Cassin on Piz Badile, but the weather did not seem to agree with this plan so we switched our objective to the Dolomites.

Cima Grande North Face
The North Face of Cima Grande

The Comici route is one of the six classic north faces in the Alps and almost the symbol for climbing in the Dolomites. It was climbed first in 1933 by the extremely talented Italian climber Emilio Comici.

We found ourselves at the Rifugio Aurenzo on friday, but Some heavy downpour with thunder during the night quickly changed our plans since the Comici is north facing and it is well known that the chimneys are often wet for several days after rain. We quickly changed our objective to the ‘Spigolo Giallo’ or the ‘Yellow Edge’ – this is also a Comici route, but it is south facing and should dry quickly. We wanted have some sun on the wall, so we decided not to start to early. We left the rifugio at 7:45 and soon found ourselves at the start together with half the population of northern Italy. We did not really fancy queueing up for several hours, so we went back to our original plan and went to have a look at the north face where we started climbing at 9:20

The route is overhanging for the first part and is really sustained for the first 7 pitches. After this it eases off to vertical, but it is still quite demanding even if the technical grade is not so high.

Cima Grande, Via Comici
Paolo leading the first grade VII crux.

We found the climbing very enjoyable and the rock is actually really good when you compare it to some of the choss that is often found the Dolomites. The protection is a mix of self placed gear and old pitons. It generally protects well. We managed to free climb most of the sustained first part, but we had to climb A0 and pull on the pegs in the soaked-up chimneys higher up. This was rather a dirty wet job that probably delayed us for 1-2 hours.

Cima Grande, Via Comici
A look from the Comici into the neighbouring Hasse/Brandler which theese days are a free climbing test piece. You can try to spot the climbers in the photo!

Cima Grande, Via Comici
A serious dose of exposure. This is actually one of the better belays on the face.

Cima Grande, Via Comici
A look down the face we just climbed with only two easy pitches to go. We arrived at the spot after a very airy traverse, where we had to exit a wet cave. About nine hours after starting out we found ourselves at the ring band terrace, just below the summit. We wanted to go down immediately before dark, but we failed to find the descent and soon we where wandering around in the dark. The descent took longer than expected, but after a series of scary abseils we where back on terra firma.

Cima Grande, Via Comici
Back on the ground at night after getting a good scare. A perfect day on a classic alpine north face.

The Gallery on flickr:
https://flickr.com/photos/astrange/albums/72157627481203973


New Discoveries

I have been climbing on Kullen in Sweden for more than 15 years. In other words it’s my local climbing crag, so I would like to think that I know the area pretty well. I went out to Kullen on Saturday with my friend Anders Vedersøe to do some trad climbing. It was the first time for me in a while climbing with a rope since I have been busy with my newborn daughter. I have only had time for bouldering and a bit of training at the climbing wall. It was very cool to be back on Kullen to discover the area of Vattenhjulet.

It’s incredible that after so many years of visiting Kullen, it’s still possible to discover new quality stuff. It was my first visit to this sector. It’s not a hugely popular area since it has a rather awkward abseil access, but I got very pleasantly surprised with the atmosphere, but also with the quality of the routes.

Abseil into Vattenhjulet
Abseil into Vattenhjulet

Oligmal, 6-
Climbing Oligmal, 6-

What a nice day!


Five days in Chamonix

Hans and I had the chance to do a quick raid to Chamonix this Easter. We left on Wednesday and went back home again on Monday. The conditions where quite good. There was some foehn activity on the Italian side of the Massif, but we managed to do 4 good routes in five days!

On Thursday we went to Aiguille Rouges for some warm-up climbing

Robin Wood (TD-,120m,6a)
Hans following ‘Robin Wood’ (TD-, 120m, 6a)

On Friday we went up to Midi to do some Rock Climbing on the South Face. It was quite windy so we changed our original plan of doing the Kohlmann to the more moderate (but very good)  Eperon des Cosmique (D+, 160m, V+) We had an outstanding day and despite the cold wind it was quite pleasant to touch the warm granite.

Eperon des Cosmique
Me above the roof on the crux pitch (5+/6a) (Photo by Hans)

We rapped of to the Cosmique hut after completing the climb.

Abseil from Eperon des Cosmique, Chamonix
Abseiling off Eperon des Cosmique

On the following day we wanted to climb the Contamine on Pointe Lachenal, but we woke up to a snowstorm so there was no rock climbing for us. All we could do was to make our way back to Midi and go down to the valley for some sport climbing.

On Sunday we where back in Aiguille Rouge and despite some rather low hanging cloud we managed to do two routes. ‘La Plage’ (D, 120m) and ‘La lampe d’Allardin’ (TD, 120m, 6a+)

Hans på toppen
Hans on the summit in Aig. Rouges

Four routes in in five days is not bad and I think our small trip was a success and even if we wanted to have climbed a bigger objective it’s just so good to be out in the mountains.

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Spring in Bohuslän

Spring is here and we went climbing in Bohuslän!

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Days in the sun

Just back from a week in Gressoney, Italy. We had fantastic weather with sun all over. The snow pack was decent, but off course there is not much powder snow in such conditions. We skied all over the place between Alanga, Gressony & Champoluc. It’s a ski fantastic areas that has skiing up to over 3300 meters. Especially the off-piste from Punta Indren is spectacular.


Hot and Cold

It’s been a while since I last had time to do some blogging, but I have have been busy traveling. In January I went a week to Tenerife with my family and some good friends. We went for general beach relaxation at El Medano, but also a bit of rock climbing. It was a super fun week! We climbed in the Arico gorge and a little bit at the Las Canadas plateau in the middle of the island. The plateau is located at 2200 meters so it was a rather chilly experience to climb here, but a little cold can’t distract from the fact that it is a marvellous setting with a view to the Teide volcano. In the Arico gorge it was warm and pleasant during the day.

I had fun shooting some pictures on a regular old fashioned SLR film camera. The film is the new Kodak Ektar 100 – I am quite pleased with the results so I hope you enjoy the pictures.

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Back in Rjukan

It was good to be back in Rjukan for a long weekend of ice climbing. This time I did not have super high ambitions since I really haven’t done much ice climbing recently. It was just nice to be climbing and having fun with my friends. Just being back on the ice was a good kick. I did not do anything hard, but I had a good time doing the moderates in Krokan and around the Vermok bridge. Simon and I climbed the classic WI5 ‘Sabotørsfossen’ on Saturday. After a late start and a bit of warm-up on Swingfoss we dispatched Sabotørfossen in about 1½ hrs. It got dark while we where doing the last pitch and we topped out in complete darkness. A super day on a fantastic route!

Sabotørfossen 2nd pitch
Simon starting the 2nd pitch on Sabotørfossen in Rjukan, Norway


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