Dirty South Climbing Trip

Well it is that time again. I am off tomorrow for Asia first stop Vietnam. Also on the list is Thailand in Feb, china in march and part of April and than job permitting Australia for the rest of April. I finished up a good fire season in November, check out www.sawtoothhotshots.org for some pictures of the season, than went for a road trip to the south east. i pick up my buddy ben in New Orleans and went to horse pens 40 in Alabama for a few days and than on to the red river gorge in Kentucky. After ben left I spent another 2 weeks climbing in Little rock city tenn, horse pens 40 and rocktown in Georgia had a fun but cold trip so needless to say I am excited to go climb limestone in the tropics!!! Here are a few pictures.

The the F*%& is a piggly wiggly

Fred On Comet Dyno Rocktown

Mortal Combat HP40

Jamey on Cyclops Little rock city

Ben on Millipede HP40

HP40 Sickness

Font. to Ceuse and back

Here are a few pictures from the last half of my trip. After spending 3 weeks in font. I found a ride down to Ceuse. Considering the weather was becoming a bit to hot to climb in font I decided it was time to move on. Unfortunately the climbing gods did not agree. About 2 hours from ceuse the car I was riding in, nicknamed Tulip, decided it had had enough and died. Anne, the unfortunate owner of tulip, and I took it to a garage. The mechanic, not knowing any English, give Tulip the death X with his arms conveying to us that tulip was no more. So two days and two cars, after leaving font, later we arrived in ceuse. We arrive to perfect weather which complemented the perfect rock. After one day of climbing in ceuse I can easily say that it is the best sport climbing I have every done. We were graced with 2 climbing days and than it started to rain... and snow. The forecast was not promising calling for over a week of heavy rain. Font on the other hand was cool and sunny so we drove back to font. This must have been what the climbing gods wanted because the first climbing day back I managed to climb Hale-Bopp a really cool V10 dyno I had been working on for a few days. Well this is going to be the last blog post for a while, I start up work in a few days and will be stuck climbing in Deirkes Twin falls for most of the summer. There are plans in the works for a China trip next year and also possibly a Pakistan trip as well, so there will be much more pictures and stories to come.
Conrad

Sending Hale-Bopp V10 Photo-Raul

Otso, Nic and the Fortress of Solitude

Anne on a highball V6

Sending Rainbow Rocket V9/11 Photo- Otso

Rainbow Rocket Photo-Otso

Ceuse, enough said.

Fontainebleau

I have been in France for a little over two weeks and thought it was time to post some pictures. It has been a Hampi, India reunion for me. I was greated at the Fontainebleau train station by Otso and Oyvind two climbers I met in India. Two other Hampi friends, Paula and Jacob, joined us for about a week. Right now I am hanging out and climbing with Otso who leaves in a few days. The climbing has been good, a bit rainy last week, but the rock dries fast. The climbing in Font is hard. Ever hold is open handed and friction dependent. It is intense on the back, core and shoulders, but really fun. Well dont have the motivation to write anymore so hopefully the pictures will tell the story for me this time.
Conrad

Train station

Otso on Beatlejuice V7

Unknown classic total font style


Stephan on a V6 ish arete


Expresso in the morning


Otso on Diversion V7/8


Oyvind On Excalibur V7

Hampi Videos

Two videos my buddy Ben Cummings made of a bunch of classic climbs in Hampi.

Part 1



Part 2

Badami Round II

As time began to run short for me in India my friend Otso suggested one more trip to Badami. I felt I had a very successful trip in Hampi, sending all but a few projects, so I agreed to go. Our crew was smaller this time comprised of Otso, Camilla, Kaare, Autumn, Dean, Tom and I. We said our goodbyes in Hampi and made our way to the local bus station to catch our bus, which we opted to take instead of the taxi. Tom, Dean and I were on top of the bus trying to secure our crash pads as the bus started to leave the station. The last thing I heard was Dean yell "This isn't safe!" as they bail off the top and climb aboard. Knowing the road conditions and the way these buses drive I knew our crash pads were as good as lost if I didn't tie them down, so i hunkered down and tried to speed up the process while yelling at the bus to stop. Not wanted to endure a couple hours on top of the roof, I quickly finished, jumped off and hopped aboard the moving bus. My knots lucky held and we arrive in Badami just as it got dark with all the crashpads still aboard. We celebrated our safe journey with delicious Indian Thali's, a common Indian meal with three different curries, rice, curd and roti bread with a dessert all for a little over a dollar, and of course Kingfisher beer.

Having spent more time in India since my last Badami trip I was able to relax and enjoy this trip more than the first one, despite the noise, filth and general chaotic vibe of India. I was also prepared for the kids, this trip. At the first sound of "school pen" I would turn and with wide eyes and a big goofy grin and go chasing after the kids yelling "school pen!" in my best witches voice. This usually did the trick either making them laugh or shocked them enough to not ask for anything else. The climbing was amazing, hopefully these pictures do this place justice.

Its funny, being in India I got to experience so many new things and my trip is full of little moments which I think back to and are so grateful to have been apart of. One of those moments happened during our last day in Badami. Otso and I had been climbing at an area bordering a small dirt path. We were told by the many kids that walked by with there cricket bats that it was a holiday and there was no school. Soon we found ourselves surrounded by close to twenty boys. I pulled the whole school pen routine chases them, tugging at there shirts, which they found very funny and the begging stopped. They watched us climb, helped spot and cheered when we sent. During our breaks they would climb atop the boulders and dare each other to jump off onto the crash pad. Otso showed them how it was done and soon the boys were taking turns jumping onto my pad as I took pictures. The heat was setting in so we started to pack up. The kids saw this and told us to come play cricket with them. We agreed and followed them to a flat sandy field where fifty some boys where playing a couple games of cricket. As I sat my pad down I was swarmed by kids all fighting over a place to sit on it. Otso and I would take turns bowling for the kids, all of which wanted a turn to hit a ball bowled from a westerner. Some of the older boys would stand next to me critiquing my bowling technique yelling, "wide, wide!" or "Good bowling!" when I managed to hit a wicket. I was soon offered a turn at bat and the kids took turns bowling for me, laughing when I missed and cheering when I made a good hit. The cricket soon turned to play fighting and typical boy shenanigans. I sat down and watched as the boys practiced there long jumping in the sand and laughed as one boy would drag his frightened friends up to me and tell me to wrestle or kick-box them. Rarely have I found anyone to be this friendly and open to strangers, but my time in India was filled with encounter like this, which I feel very fortunate to have experienced.

Otso on Badami Two Tap

Me on a unnamed 5.12ish climb. Photo Kaare Iverson


Camilla on an unnamed Classic


Otso on possibly the second ascent of Marble Rye.


More boys of Badami.


Official Asana pad testers. Apparently jumping down is more fun than climbing up.

The Badami round two crew enjoying a kingfisher.

Badami round one

Well folks I am back in the states trying to get over a post India sickness. I will continue to post stories, pictures and hopefully a few videos of my India trip in the next few weeks. Enjoy.

I first heard of Badami while climbing in Hampi. I was told it was home to amazing sandstone cliffs and boulders, so when my friend Chris Welden, a Canadian squamite, told me he was planning a trip there I was very keen to join. Badami, the erstwhile capital of the Chalukya empire, located in northern part of the India state of Karnataka lies between 100 and 200 kilometers from hampi. One of our faithful taxi drivers named "Funky" told us it was a 3 to 4 hour drive. This 3 hour drive slowly turned into a 6 hour drive, which was expected because driving anywhere in India is an extremely time consuming task. The tiny pot hole ridden roads make travel slow, massive traffic jams common and reckless driving apparently necessary. We were a two taxi van convoy each pack to the brim with three Indian drivers and eight climbers. I was seated in one of the vans, back up against the drivers seat looking out the back window. I would judge the level of danger I was in by the looks on Oyvind, Eirik and Jakobs faces, who were unlucky enough to see the oncoming traffic. There faces would go from nervous to anxious to scared to terrified, they would than close there eyes and flinch just as the taxi would swerve out of the passing lane narrowly missing one of the many oncoming giant buses or trucks, with there unbelievable loud horns. Each town we would go through the drivers would yell something and as our taxis would inevitably stop at a traffic jam curious Indian onlookers would swarm the van yelling "Your country!?" "Your name!?" "Schoolpen!?" "Rupee!?" "Biscuit!?". As the taxi would finally start driving again the children would chase after it yelling and screaming.

As dusk encroached we were welcomed to the site of sandstone cliffs and the dirty, noisy city of Badami. Just as the idea of dinner, beer and bed started to creep into my mind our chief negotiator Chico, a fluent Hindi speaker, Chris and Kevin or Beefcake came back from their hotel search and told us there were no rooms due to a Holiday. Since bed was no longer viable we opted for the dinner and beer. Over a cold kingfisher our luck changed. Chris had gone back to one hotel with a single empty room to see if it would be possible to fit all 16 of us into it for a night. While at the hotel the manager offered up their vacant group hall, used for weddings and parties, and the one empty room. We took it.

After a morning of chai and Masala Dosa, a potato and curry filled crape, we headed for the rocks. The rock in Badami is not as extensive as hampi, nothing is, but it is sandstone and it produces amazing, steep, thuggy climbs. The beautiful red swirled, marble rye breadsque rock, was a welcomed change from hampi and we spent the first day wondering the sandstone corridors and cliffs searching for boulders and the climbing gems of the area.

I quickly began to realize what an oasis Hampi and Goan's Corner was. Badami was much more like the real India I had heard of. Every day we would walk through slums and pass wild pig infested open sewers, trash piles and the occasional drunk passed out Indian man face down in the dirt on the side of the road. The biggest challenge was the kids. One morning on the way to the rocks we past through a Muslim slum. We were swarmed upon by 20 to 30 kids at first asking us our name and country. Then they started tugging at my hands asking for school pens, rupees, chocolate and biscuits; this was quite the experience. As we reached the edge of the town and started to walk up into the hills a few of the kids, obviously angry that they did not get anything from us, began throwing rocks. Before we could do much a parent appeared and the kids scattered. This was not the last of our experiences with the badami kids. Every day at least a few of them would find us hiding in the rocks and spend a few hours with us watching our every move. They started off begging, which worked at first. Hoping they would stop someone in our group would eventually give them a biscuit or empty water bottle or a bit of climbing tape. It quickly became apparent that this made the begging worse. Although this was frustrating I couldn't help but be sympathetic to them, for if I was in there situation I would do the same thing. After the kids realized they had gotten all they could out of us they began to act like kids. It was fun to watch them roughhouse with each other on our crashpads or try their hand at climbing with our over sized climbing shoes and chalk. We spent three nights in badami and then took the taxis back to Hampi where we spent new years, but I would return right before I left India. Badami round two soon to come.

Kids of Badami with Beefcake


Chris on an unnamed ungraded roof problem

The Monkeys showing us how it was done.

Otso on an unnamed ungraded roof problem


Colorful schoolgirls at the caves of Badami. Amazing temples carved out of the cliff face.


Otso on another unnamed ungraded gem


Beefcake enjoying the cramped six hour taxi ride back to Hampi.

Behind the lens with Kaare Iverson

Hey folks my time is running out in Hampi so I thought I better post some more photos. I have become friends with a Canadian climber/ photographer named Kaare Iverson and we went out one morning and shot some photos in the hot morning light. Note the colorful red shirt (Mike). Kaare was generous enough to let me post some of his beautifully composed pictures which depict the climbing in hampi very well. check out his blog on climbing.com- Kaare Iverson

I have one more week in hampi and than back to badami for some sandstone climbing before I have to head home I am in project mood right now and have managed to tick all but three of my projects hopefully the next four days will bring many sends. Lots more pictures and stories to come soon. Enjoy.

Unnamed problem V9/10
Copyright Kaare Iverson 2010

Space Baba V7/8
Copyright Kaare Iverson 2010

Slappin' the Baba V8
Copyright Kaare Iverson 2010

Ben Chico Pete and I bringing in the new years in style with many explosives.
Copyright Kaare Iverson 2010