Wednesday 30 January 2013

Rabenstein World Cup & Stuff!

The 3rd round of the Ice Climbing World Cup took place at the weekend, once again, Andy and Simon travelled out there hoping to climb hard and in Simon's case, "impress the ladies".

The comp was won by Angelika Rainer and Maxim Tomilov with brother Alexey finishing 3rd leaving just enough room on the podium for the short guy of competition ice climbing, Park Heeyong, to squeeze in for 2nd. Both Maxim and Park topped out on the finals route, Maxim climbing 8 seconds faster than Park to secure top spot. The legend that is Markus Bendler, retired from competition climbing after finishing 4th in Rabenstein.

Andy and Simon both climbed well on a very steep board with "shit placements" but unfortuntately missed out on semi-final qualification. Next stop, Romania.

Full results can be found on the UIAA website.

Markus Bendler @ Rabenstein. Copyright UIAA.

Meanwhile once the boys got back to Blighty it was off to The Works for a spot of training, or in my case, remembering how to climb. First session on tools in 8 weeks and it was as bad as I expected it to be. I decided that if failure was going to be the order of the day I may as well fail on something hard and therefore decided it was time to open an account with Guardian of the Underworld (M12). One of Andys creations it takes an overhanging arete to start with big, powerful moves from the world go before tackling the roof of the cave through the biggest section.
In the end I completely ran out of steam just working out the bottom section. Chevis had a few redpoint attempts and Andy was lapping First Blood (M9+).

A quick video I put together of the days fun.......


A Day at The Works from Tom B on Vimeo.

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