Fusion Festival!

Kickin off the summer holidays with Alex at a great music festival about 1 1/2 hours north of Berlin. The festival takes places at an old Russian airforce base and a lot of stages are in hangars. Mostly elelctronic music, although the only person I'd ever heard of before was Jello Biafra...?

http://www.fusion-festival.de/

a trip to Politz and the Baltic Sea

If every cultivated field was painted its own special color I think violence would cease to exist. Rapeseed, good start.








Somehow, the triangle bread picture ended up being the only picture taken of our camping trip on the Baltic Sea...it was really tasty bread.

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.