Kristoffer Szilas

This weekend Simon, Carsten and I drove 12 hours to get to Lærdal in Norway. This place has tons of big ice climbs and a guide for the area can be found HERE.

We climbed Bøafossen (WI4, 90m) on the day we arrived and Kjorlifossen (WI5+, 400m) the next day, which was a full day route for us as a team of three. We got absolutely soaked to the skin, but it was a fun day with a real alpine feel to it. This place is highly recommendable!

Bøafossen:

Kjorlifossen:

After Christmas I spent a few days climbing in Rjukan, but unfortunately the conditions are not good at the moment. There has been very little snowfall and the strong cold has stopped the ice from forming. None of my projects at Sector Arne were climbable and the little ice that had formed elsewhere was very brittle.

I did, however, manage to climb the drytool route Fission.

I had climbed it once already (using heelspurs) about five years ago, but obviously that does not count as a free ascent. This time I did it bareback (leashless, without spurs and no leg-resting on the tools). The guide book calls it D10 (D for drytool), but compared to the stuff I've done in Kandersteg it cannot be harder than D9.

It was a pleasant surprise to run into Norwegian top climber Robert Caspersen at Krokan. We met in Patagonia recently, so it was quite a coincidence to meet him back in Norway. He was climbing well, as always, despite the extreme cold and I took the photo below of him running up an M7 wearing big mitts!

David and I failed big time in Patagonia! In the three weeks we were there we only had one good weather window and we ended up not climbing anything when we had the chance:

In frustration over the poor weather I did a daily training session of figure-fours in a tree next to the hostel we stayed at (grade T4 equivalent of M8+), but finally we saw a weather window appear in the forecast.

The original plan was to do Exocet on Standhart, but we found out that two Norwegian, two Swiss, two British and one American climber would attempt the route that day, so obviously we would have to do another route and decided to try Supercanaleta on Fitz Roy.

We had stashed some gear at Niponino so we walked up over Sitting Man Ridge to the start of the climb, which took us about ten hours from El Chalten. At the base of the climb we met two American climbers (Seba and Michael from New Hampshire) who also wanted to start the following morning.

David on the approach to Fitz Roy:

The evening started with clear blue skies and the route looked to be in excellent condition with an easy bergschrund to cross. The plan was to start up the route at 2 AM, but during the evening the wind got stronger and suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of a snowstorm that would last almost until next day at noon. I did not sleep at all that night because my Therm-a-rest was punctured. I was lying on top of my backpack and one of the ropes, but spindrift kept collecting under me from the sides and in the end I was basically laying directly on snow with my sleeping bag and shivered through the night.

The American boys were not too lucky either as their tent blew away together with a mat and a jacket. They never found the jacket again, but recovered the rest.

The next morning the Americans came over to us and asked us if we wanted to drive back to El Chalten with them as it was too late in the day to start up the route anyway and they had a car waiting at Rio Electrico. In the storm it was much more appealing to do the easy four hour descent over Paso del Cuadrado rather than go back the same way we came, so we walked out with Michael and Seba and got a ride back to town.

The next day was perfect with blue skies and no wind, so we were quite depressed not to have stayed up in the mountains to climb something else, but now it was too late to get back up there.

Obviously there was a lot of heavy drinking going on that evening and surprisingly we met another team that was as unlucky as us. An Austrian team, that would have liked to attempt the Compressor route on Cerro Torre, had to turn back as they had lost their tent poles some where on the approach. The motto of the evening was “Look at me, I’m the biggest loser in all of Patagonia!”

Me at the start of Sitting Man Ridge:

We did not get another chance to climb, but at least we had good company at the hostel from the owner Sebastian and four Norwegian climbers who also stay there. Nils and Ole had done Todo Nada on Mocho and Bjørn-Eivind and Robert had done Exocet on Cerro Standhart in the weather window.

Of course on the day I left the weather was awesome, so hopefully the Norwegian boys climbed something cool. David and I have already agreed on a vendetta in Patagonia next year!

Photos from the trip can be found here.

Today I did a training session at the Monastery and managed to do an indoor M10 first try, so fortunately I kept a lot of my strength by training in that tree in Patagonia and should be ready for the winter season..

Recently I’ve been training with Scottish alpinist Malcolm Kent, who temporally lives in Copenhagen. He is the probably the best unknown climber in the world. He has done everything from M13 mixed to 8c+ sport to insane WI?? to a solo of Gasherbrum IV’s Shining Wall (the most impressive unreported alpine accomplishment I have ever heard of)!

It’s a great opportunity for me to learn how to train like a pro and already within a few months I have pushed beyond my previous best climbing shape, so I’m really excited about the upcoming winter.

Last year my focus was on ice climbing and this year I try and find my limit on mixed routes.

First, however, I will go on a short trip to Patagonia with David Gladwin (UK), who is an old friend of mine. As always it will be interesting to see what kind of weather and conditions we get. Anyway it will be a great opportunity to test some gloves from GripGrab.

Also, I just got a huge shipment of gear from my main sponsor Millet, so now I’m more than ready for winter to begin..

One last training session before Patagonia:

I have gotten a sponsor deal with GripGrab, which is a Danish company that produces some really cool outdoor gloves. Currently they focus on gloves for cycling, running, fitness and skiing, but I will try and develop a glove specifically for climbing with them, which I am really looking forward to.

Below is a short video of me from a training session testing some gloves from Gripgrab: