Monday, May 12, 2014

First time in Magic Wood this year

Magic Wood is one of the place I have always been attracted and motivated to climb because Its location is absolutely incredible and there is a huge quantity of amazing problems from 6a to 8c range. I fall in love with the forest since the first visit in 2011. When the season ended in Ticino I was super sycked to check as soon as possible the wood because I had a a long wish list of the projects that I would like to do or at least to try.

So I planned with Andrea, Gabry and Marco (a friend of Andrea and mine) 2 days in the forest because The weather forecast seemed to be very promising with super climbing condition. We left Italy and in about 3 hours we were at the Generoso guesthouse where we rented a small room where we could sleep. Here there was a huge kitchen too in common with the others rooms. We left our stuff and we went to enjoy the boulders.

After a quick warm up Marco sent in few tries “Stress Man 7A” so we moved to try “Muttertag 8a” well known  to be one the best one move boulder here around.  The first attempts I tried to grab the crimp with the RH but every time my hand wasn’t able to stick it so I decided to change my beta and to try to jump with my LH. I felt better and I started to lock the crimp without being able to hold the swing. After a couple of tries I did it and I could say that this is the most phenomenal one move I’ve ever done.

Then we went to check  “Jack’s broken heart 8A” where Gabri was able to send the direct finish called “Tintenfisch alarm 8A+”. Gabri explained to me JBH ‘s beta so I decided to get one try one from the start but just try. Suddently I found myself after the hardest part where there are 2 big slopy rails where I took breath and I shaked a bit because I realized  that  I couldn’t  make any mistake, just few moves and I’ll be at top. My hands turned ice but luckily everything went perfectly. When I was at the top I felt so tired as I played a football match breathing heavily but I was super excited to have flash my first 8A boulder.
Jack's broken heart in Magic Wood - Pic Andrea Zanone

Few goes after Andrea sent the problem too so we moved to our real project “Riverbed 8B”.
I took a rest and I ate something because I needed to recover the energies lost from the big effort few time before.
When I felt ready I started to try all the singles moves and I about 10 minutes of work I configured out my beta. I felt the singles moves pretty easy but the hard of the boulder is to be still fresh and strong enough to stick the last moves at the end of the roof. The line is composed of about 8 easy moves on jugs on the first part of the cave where you join the end of the cave and the start of the horizontal roof. From there, there are more than 10 hard moves with a lot of hell and toe hook, where you have to climb really fast to save as much power as you can.
I had really good tries from the bottom falling just 2 moves before the end of the roof because I felt without energies and power. I was completely exhaust
The second day passed really quickly, I tried again Riverbed and  I fall again at the same point but with a little more energies. I think that It’s just question of time and of tries because if you are able to metabolize the movements in the best way you can have a chance to do it.

I’m really sycked to be back in the forest as soon as I can because I have a lot of stuff to do.