France is like Kentucky!!!*

Alex and I took a little road trip to France to check out a few climing sites in Alsace. We found amazing tarte flambee, perhaps the world's best, and great wine, went "wild camping" and were almost speared to death by ferocious wild boar in the middle of the night, and practiced our quickdraw-clipping skills. The trip ended with misshap when Alex injured his knee (torn meniscus?) but he now gets to use a really nifty pair of crutches with built-in reflectors - always look on the "bright" side of life???


Climbing sites - Lorsbacher Wand, Germany; Nouveau Gouberschwihr, France; Bergholtz, France

Lorsbacher Wand, Lorsbach, Germany: a nice little slate rock wall about 20 minutes from Oberursel. Around 40 bolted routes ranging from grades 4- to 8, UIAA system.

Testing out Alex's new rope at Lorbacher Wand. First time lead climbing outside in a long time! This was our warm-up daytrip.

Nouveau Gueberschwihr, Gueberschwihr, France: sandstone climbing, 10 different sections of wall and a whole bouldering area. Bolted, hard standstone. Lots of easy routes. Really beautiful area on a hill overlooking Alsace wine region of France.

Notice how Alex is using a fine white table cloth instead of a rope bag (we WERE in France...)

Alexander, prince of Durp, overlooking Gueberschwihr.

Feels so great to be climing outside again!

Bergholtz, France: Lots of bolted routes on North and South sections. Really beautiful area, a bit of a hike to reach the walls. The sandstone was quite soft in some areas, but some great cracks!

Alex (white pants) on C'est Cholibah

Alex (still in white pants) on Par Benelos

My favorite [meniscus-tearing] lead (you can see my black pants at the top of the crack): Porcos III, la rechute

*okay, so France isn't exactly like Kentucky, but the hills and oak trees somehow reminded me of Red River Gorge

Spring is here in Oberursel!

Alex and I found a new bouldering problem by my house:

Katinka and Fabian's wedding!

Snowboarding Break 2010

For ski break this year I headed down to Austria with a bunch of friends. We rented a big, cozy house in the village of Lungotz, about an hour south of Salzburg...and snowboarded our brains out.

The best deal around was the Salzburg Super Ski Card which enabled the rider to ski at any of the hills in the Salzburg area - we had a map with a long list of spots and spent a good bit of time weighing our options - "Krippenstein tomorrow, or Flachauwinkl?" We mostly rode at Obertauern because the off-piste conditions were the best and it's a really pretty area. Also Dachstein West (Annaberg and Gosau), Krippenstein, and Flachauwinkl.

The view from the ski house - great cross country ski tracks crossed right infront of the house. I only used them a couple times, though - exhausted from snowboarding.

Our ski house in Lungotz (Felix's trusty van to the left got stuck in the snowbank one morning about 400m from the house - shoveling with our new avalanche shovels only sunk the tires deeper until the monster plow drove past and pulled us out)

Jayson gets ready to ride

Ryan in the Gondola

Agnes and Lea

Lunchbreak - me, Felix, Jayson, Agnes, and Richie. Sandwiches in the snow (1 cheese, 1 banana+peanutbutter)

Richie, me, and Felix

Due to a broken binding, Felix and I were separated from our friends and food this lunch break and had to resort to eating...brotchen and frozen nutella found in the back of the van! Hard times!

Have you ever had to chip nutella out of the jar with a spoon?

Richie and me at the best lunch spot of all on top of Flachauwinkl. There was a great off-piste area just down from here that we spent most of the afternoon exploring.

Felix and I also checked out Krippenstein which is supposed to be an off-piste paradise - 2 gondolas, one 11-km piste, and the rest is free riding. We unfortunately came after a few warm days (all but the last 2 days of the trip were warm, sunny, and sweaty) where all the powder was tracked up and crusted over. Our 2 rides down the mountain took 4 hours and involved butt-scooting down a luge track riddled with tree roots and a lengthy hike in search of the illusive non-crusty powder. Not my favorite. But great potential after a heavy snow.

Felix retrieves his board which took a solo side-trip into a hole (though, luckily, not over a cliff) in Krippenstein.

We took lunch after the 1st run in Krippenstein this day.

But after lunch and our 2nd run we were fed up and headed back to Dachstein West, homebase, and had a fantastic afternoon slush-riding on the almost-desterted pistes.

Richie came a skier but picked up snowboarding so quickly I almost didn't recognize him wizzing past me.

Lea, Richie, Will, Jayson, Felix, and Agnes - finally getting fresh powder!

Will and Ryan apres ski.

Lots of fresh powder on the last day. Felix is pointing just left of where we hiked for our last run of the trip.

Mom: can I please have a PIEPS avalanche beacon for my birthday?

Felix at the top of the last hike.

What's in Bulgaria, anyway?

After New Years in Istanbul, we took the overnight train to Sofia, Bulgaria (Bulgaria is the large yellow outlined country on the map) and met up with Dani and Erika. They are both Italian but met studying Russian and now Erika teaches Russian and English (and French?) in Shumen. We spent a few days wandering around the capital city of Bulgaria, still recovering from the fall of communism in 1989.

Daniela Martini

That's my sister!

Dani and Erika.

Perfecting the "sleeping model" look

Yes, you can find very different food in Bulgaria compared to America...

Dinner at Happy's with Erika's Bulgarian friends (what happened with the Policeman, Erika?...)

The 4 of us flew to Varna, a little town on the Black Sea with some nice beaches. In the summer, very popular for European sunbathers.

And so began Project Feed Varna's Hard-times Street Friends.

...it got a little out-of-hand at times.

The Black Sea!

We stayed at Erika's apartment in Shumen and watched really great Eastern-European MTV-style music videos. And Dani made us mousse!

Chelsea, me, Dani, and Erika

Central heating in a cavernous Shuman church.

Chelsea and I said farewell to Erika and Dani and headed to Veliko Turnovo, a speck on the map and a random suggestion from the friend of a friend of a friend. We were planning on staying one night but ended up staying 3 - what a great little village! Found a lovely place to stay, the quiet Phoenix Hostel, run by a Welsh couple, Nick and Kathy, who make you feel like you're instantly at home.

Land is cheap in Bulgaria, where the average person makes 50 euros/month.

Veliko Tarnovo is built around the Yantra River which winds haphazardly around 4 big hills. The old section of town is filled with beautiful historic buildings, narrow cobbelstone streets. The first fortress was built here in 400AD by the Bizantines and the village was the captial of the 2nd Bulgarian empire until 1393. The most recent Tsarvets Fortress is in the upper right corner of this picture. There is a University here and some industry outside of town, but it's not longer a political center.

We went for a lot of long hikes to other villages.

When the Soviets left in 1989 they took most of their industry with them, leaving many abandoned factories and half-completed buildings which litter the skyline. They also uprooted many farming families and relocated them to industrial centers, like Shumen, forcing them to live in the Bulgarian equivalent of The Projects, which still stand bleakly at the edges of towns.

Exploring Tsarvets Fortress

We hiked along the edge of a gorge to Preobrazhenski Monastery, built in 1360. In a beautiful location below huge rock cliffs (many Romanians come here to climb), with a great view. Zahari Zograf painted the"Circle of Life" on this chapel in 1850.

Preobrazhenski Monastery

The view from the Preobrazhenski Monastery

Lunch at the convent across from the monastery...you have to walk down through to gorge to get here. I guess that makes sense! Great climbing over here, too.

Kathy and Nick

Back in Sofia...remnants of another time.

Pecto-pat = restaurant. Cyrillic alphabet was interesting to practice. It was originally developed , we were told, by the church (St. Cyril) in the 9th century to prevent different religions from spreading into the area.