Magic Wood in Switzerland was one favourite on the list of climbing destinations for this year. This beautiful forest near the river with hundreds of nice boulder problems is truly a wonderful place to be and actually not too far located from us. I have not been there since the last trip one year ago, so it was high time to return for four days and to try some former projects again…
One of these boulder problems I tried on the last Magic Wood trip was ‚Body Count‘ [8a/+]. The boulder looks quite unspectacular on a dull edge, but the movements are quite athletic and a lot of fun to figure them out. Max explained the sequence to me, and I did most of the moves even if they seemed impossible at the beginning. But I could not connect the single movements or even climb the whole boulder sequence in the last days of the trip. Now, I wanted to try it again…
A good tactic would have been to figure out the single moves for two days, doing a rest day and then climbing the boulder fully recovered. Instead, we climbed a bunch of boulders in the first two days. Paul climbed the ‚Right hand of darkness‘ [7c+/8a] and I finally climbed my little nemesis project ‚Intermezzo‘ [7c] (everyone told me how easy this boulder problem actually is, but I struggled for a long time). On the second day, I was already too tired to repeat the single movements of ‚Body Count‘.
We planned the third day as a rest day to recover and to heal the skin on the fingertips. The plan was to do some easier boulder problems in the forest. Well, it somehow escalated pretty fast, and I climbed seven boulder problems up to 7c like ‚Fightclub‘ [7c] and ‚Red Roses SD‘ [7b]. The day itself was a lot of fun, but I was not recovered at all. We did not even try our project on this day…
All our hope relayed on a lucky shot on our last day. Being super tired, with no skin left on the fingertips and the warm sun in the afternoon, our chances seemed to be low. Even though Paul did not expect us to climb this boulder on our last day left, he climbed all single sequences multiple times. And I sat there watching him doing it again and again. I had never climbed the whole crux sequence before and felt too tired to try it multiple times. But I was sure Paul would do it within his next tries, and I feared to be left alone struggling the whole day with this boulder to leave it unclimbed again. To actively avoid this situation, I focus all my power, took the starting holds and just climbed the whole boulder. I left surprised at the ground and he got visibly nervous to be the one struggling the whole day alone at the boulder. But this motivated him even more and two tries later he also climbed ‚Body Count‘.
In the end, it was more a mind game – It is nice and valuable to climb with friends that can push your motivation on and on. After four days of running through the forest and climbing every boulder that somehow looked interesting, we were pretty done. The last boulder we touched was ‚Never ending story part 2‘, but like on the trips before I had no chances to do the moves even though everybody told me again how is this boulder is. My next little nemesis project – maybe I will try this one on the next Magic Wood trip…
