Riverbed – a pretty long boulder problem next to the river in Magic Wood graded with 8b. Actually, it was not even my plan to try something in this grade. In the last weeks, I had a lot of stress at university, reduced the time of training and didn’t feel in shape. On the other hand side, I was just happy about spending some days outside wanting to climb a lot of cool looking boulders regardless of their grade.
Riverbed (8b) – starting at the low left corner, going through the overhang, up the left side to the top.
I don’t really know, why I tried this boulder – maybe I remembered the cool video of Kim Marschner or maybe I was just too lazy to walk up the forest to some other hard boulders. But I tried it and after Max told me what to do, I was able to do most single moves of the crux after the first session. But I could not climb more than two moves in a sequence. Even after a second session, I couldn’t climb the crux part without start and ending. But after we returned from Chironico I tried it in a third session. I just added the start and did some goes to see how far I could climb. After a few tries, I stuck the first crux moves and just kept climbing on and on …. I made it out of the roof in the easy ending part. As a rope climber I had enough skills to control the pump of my muscles, so endurance was not the problem. But when I did the last moves of the crux and entered the easy ending, I realised I am going to climb my hardest boulder so far. I got super nervous, couldn’t relax my muscles anymore and got super pumped within a second. I tried to reach the next better hold, but was not able to do the easy but far move – then I fell …
The Swiss locals who cheered me on Riverbed told me they had heard about guys falling there, but this was the first time they saw someone falling after the crux of the boulder. One of them, Flavio – who was trying this boulder with me – showed me the moves in the easy part again, because actually, nobody should fall there. Then he did a go. He started super fast (if you haven’t the endurance, you try to climb faster than your muscles pump), did the crux, but in the end, he got slower and then fell at the same easy part as me … The other locals enjoyed some good entertaining 🙂 , but we were done after these exhausting tries …
I really feared I wouldn’t be able to do another go like this two days before leaving Magic Wood. I rested half a day, checked the moves again and then did it in the next go. I’m super happy that I made it 🙂 .
