by Chris
2016 is coming very soon! Nothing really surprising... we have every 12 month a new year and after almost half a century I get used to it.
But for our home crags around Basel we can celebrate a 30-years-jubilee of 'Ravage', the mythical superclimb well hidden in the thick forest of Chuenisberg.
Climbing history was written there, when Antoine LeMenestrel proposed after his first ascent in 1986 the unprecedented grade of 8c. Now everything settled down a bit and 8b+/c seems to be the consensus grade. But the climb still remains superphysical, this is even true nowadays despite modern training methods.
But - wait! - something notably has changed within the decades: while the old-school-climbers from the eighties and nineties believed the powerful moves in the upper two-third of the route being the crux, the baby green powergeneration grown in boulder parks feels the first one third with the slippery and heavy footwork demanding traverse to be the hardest part.
So what's going on in this climb? How does it look like? Such a famous route and almost no photos or videos about this superclassic!
Found this one on my harddisk... it's me, doing 'Ravage' for the second time in 2003 (after my first success in 2002) while going for the extension. Okay, a bit of a vaunt... but I'm still so happy about the send. All the great days out there are still fresh in my mind.
Check it out:
2016 is coming very soon! Nothing really surprising... we have every 12 month a new year and after almost half a century I get used to it.
But for our home crags around Basel we can celebrate a 30-years-jubilee of 'Ravage', the mythical superclimb well hidden in the thick forest of Chuenisberg.
Climbing history was written there, when Antoine LeMenestrel proposed after his first ascent in 1986 the unprecedented grade of 8c. Now everything settled down a bit and 8b+/c seems to be the consensus grade. But the climb still remains superphysical, this is even true nowadays despite modern training methods.
But - wait! - something notably has changed within the decades: while the old-school-climbers from the eighties and nineties believed the powerful moves in the upper two-third of the route being the crux, the baby green powergeneration grown in boulder parks feels the first one third with the slippery and heavy footwork demanding traverse to be the hardest part.
So what's going on in this climb? How does it look like? Such a famous route and almost no photos or videos about this superclassic!
Found this one on my harddisk... it's me, doing 'Ravage' for the second time in 2003 (after my first success in 2002) while going for the extension. Okay, a bit of a vaunt... but I'm still so happy about the send. All the great days out there are still fresh in my mind.
Check it out:
Kommentare