We were waiting for weeks now to get some warm and dry days for the first short trip to Chironico of this year. And finally, at the end of March, Dominik, Paul and I came back to Ticino to try some old boulder problems again and to discover a lot of new fancy ones.
Bouldering a lot in the Palatinate on freezing cold winter days, I was looking forward to the warm spring days in Ticino. And even though the nights had subzero temperatures, the days were pleasantly warm. In the last years, I have been already a few times in Chironico, but I can not say I am used to the bouldering style there – instead I find the boulder problems quite challenging. I learned my lesson from the last frustrating Chironico trips and went there this time without a fixed project that I wanted to try. The only goal was to try and to learn a lot in these days. And so we tried a bunch of super cool boulders – more or less successful. Here the most outstanding ones:
Willenberg Dach (8a) – This was the first one we tried on these days. The roof boulder starts with some fancy hooks, a feet forward sequence and then an easier top out. Dominik and I not even finished our warm-up routine when Paul had climbed the roof boulder. Paul’s quick ascent somehow took our motivation and so we decided to try the next one …
Les doigts verts (7c+) – A traverse with some super small crimps that I had tried last year. This time I could do the moves quite fast and was able to link them together. It was cool to see some progress compared to the fitness of last year.
The arrêt with the pocket (8a) – A super cool boulder in the last corner of Chironico. I always was wondering why everybody told me about this boulder, but no one wanted to try it. Now I got the answer – the approach is really long. The boulder is quite cool, but the top out is super high. Big props to Paul and his nerves – falling in the last moves
Tricky (8a) – Funny feet forward problem -the sequence looks amazing. The only problem was that you climb feet forward out of a big roof and if you fall, you will fly like a rocket out of that roof down the hill (directly tested and proven by Paul 🙂 ). We were not even close to climbing this one, but I will take it on the list for future projects.
Even though we only spent three days in Chironico, we tried a lot of cool boulders – and we are psyched for more! The rock season started again and I am looking forward to the long climbing days in summer. And what are your projects/travel destinations at the beginning of this rock climbing season?
