When I talked to Frieder last week, we decided to go to Switzerland for bouldering. And there are a plenty of amazing spots in Switzerland. We have already seen the most famous ones, so we wanted to see something new. After reading some guides and online blogs, our favorite destination was Blattiswald – a spot next to Luzern.
Around 3h from Stuttgart, more than 60 boulders, an easy approach of 10min and the spot in a small wood sounded really nice. Indeed, Blattiswald provides some really cool problems and if you are climbing around 7b/7c it’s a perfect spot for a weekend (just the near highway is definitely too near). Unfortunately, it was raining during the night to Saturday, so the most of the boulders were wet in Blattiswald and we decided to drive to Chironico on the other side of the Alpes in hope of better conditions.
After a short warm up and a few tries in Frieders old project „Shadowfax“ (8b), we spent most of the day in the sunny part of sector Centrale. I tried „Le Pilier“ (8a) and Frieder was super motivated. So he spotted me, checked out the beta of „Le Pilier“ and repeated all the hard problems of this block, while I was struggling with the super far top move. But after some serious tries, I managed to stick the flat top holds and happily topped out. Frieder was still on fire and climbed „Rapala“ (8a) with his headlamp during a night session.
Me struggling with small crimps bevor the dynamic top move of „Le Pilier“ (Photo: Frieder Warth).
The next day, I tried a boulder from last year – „Alphane moon“ (8a/+) and did some good goes. It’s a really cool boulder, but really hard for me (big props to Mile). After a short visit of „Freak brothers“ (8a+), we repeated the „Tomahawk“ (7b+) boulder, which I wanted to climb since I saw it for the first time because it is such a nice rock edge. And I’m really happy that I managed it not to die, even I slipped off in the top slap. Maybe I should focus on my slap skills again.
Frieder fighting in one of the old projects: „Shadowfax“.
