I’m back at McDonald’s using their free wifi. We are currently in Gap, the town closest to Ceuse. I’ve put in two days of route climbing already, but I haven’t been on anything harder than 12c. My endurance is horrible. The hike up to the crag is thankfully not nearly as bad as I had imagined.

We arrived here two days ago after a short drive from l’Argentiere where the TAB competition was held. The comp was very well organized and a lot of fun. Qualifiers ran over two days; a three hour session per day. There were 47 problems and every problem counted towards the final score. There were V14 climbers doing V0s to get the points. Sarah placed 34th out of 54 open females and I came 29th from 111 open males. Sean made finals and clinched 2nd place after flashing the 4th boulder. The prize money for second place was €1000!! When are competitions in Canada going to get to this level?

The next day we drove towards Gap. On the way we stopped at a nice lake off the side of the highway. We spent about three hours swimming, tanning and lazing. When we got back to the car we discovered the most horrible thing: the car was broken into. The window wasn’t smashed but the passenger door was pryed open in order to unlock it. I’m usually pretty paranoid about leaving my bag unattended, but for some reason I left it in the car. In it was my Macbook, headphones and $700 wide angle lens, which had already been stolen once before. Sarah’s day pack with all her climbing gear was gone. Sean lost his bag of climbing gear and Mathilde’s laptop was also taken. Luckily Sean’s prize money was still in the car; the thieves didn’t search through anything, they just took what was easily accessible. In terms of value I think I was hit the hardest. I’ve definitely been feeling a bit down over the last few days. Hopefully that will subside over time. At least I didn’t lose any photos because I hadn’t even had the chance to upload them from my camera yet.

We are planning two more climbing days in Ceuse then we will drive to Barcelona with a brief stop in Valence along the way. Sean will be competing at a world cup there. Sarah and I will act as coach and physio so we can get greater than spectator access. We’ll probably spend 4 days in Barcelona then we’ll go to Rodellar to climb in the sun for a few days.

There is still a lot of time left in our trip, we won’t be back until September. However there are some exciting things awaiting us when we get home. Before I left I sold my Condo. This means that Sarah and I will be home-shopping as soon as we get back. We’re looking for a place on the North Shore. By then there should also be prime conditions in Squamish!

Unfortunately I don’t have a way to upload photos to this blog post. Until I figure out a way to do so, my words will have to suffice.

There are 37 days remaining in our European vacation. Sarah and I are tirelessly waiting for our 11:50 pm flight out of Canada. First stop: Paris. We will enjoy a lovely 3 hours of Parisian culture before we EasyJet ourselves to Nice. We land at 10:30 pm after losing most of Monday to time spent in the air and 9 hours of timezone change. Sean McColl is supposed to pick us up and take us to a lovely hotel he’s booked. Although, I haven’t talked to Sean in over a week so I hope it will be the reunion we had arranged. The next day will be spent on the beaches of Nice, a nice introduction. Then we drive a few hours north to some town I cannot pronounce where we’ll compete at the Tout à Blocs. From then on, everything else is unplanned and open ended. I’ll keep you posted with photos and stories of our adventure. See you all in September!

Back to the boulders. It’s been a few weeks. I decided to just circuit today. To stay motivated I set an unrealistic goal of doing 250 points in one session. I quickly realized that this was out of my ability so I lowered the goal to 150 points. For those of you that don’t know what I mean just add up the grades of all the boulder problems you do in a single session. Repeats are not allowed. So if you climb a V5, V9 and V3, you get 17 points. I also told my self that V3 was the easiest problem I was allowed to do. Here’s the list of boulder problems I did in order.

1. Titanic, 3 pts
2. Titanic Low, 5 pts
3. It’s About Time, 5 pts
4. Air Tight Garage, 6 pts
5. Tim’s Sloper Problem, 5 pts
6. Sesame Street, 8 pts
7. Viper, 5 pts
8. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 7 pts
9. Sloppy Poppy, 4 pts
10. Sloppy Poppy Traverse, 4 pts
11. Hoop Wrangler, 5 pts
12. Autobody (aka Fixin’ the Car), 8 pts
13. Mantel Madness, 4 pts
14. Worm World Cave, 8 pts
15. Atlas, 4 pts
16. Trad Killer, 4 pts
17. Heartbreak Hotel, 3 pts
18. Stinger Left, 6 pts
19. No Troublems, 9 pts
20. Jack’s Baby, 5 pts
21. Mindbender, 7 pts
22. Master Plan, 7 pts
23. Golden Boy, 7 pts
24. SDS to Holm Boy, 6 pts
25. Swank Stretch, 5 pts
26. Easy Chair, 4 pts
27. Superfly, 4 pts
28. Wafer Thin, 5 pts
29. Crack Head, 3 pts

If I add everything up correctly that’s 156 points! I didn’t need to do one of the last problems, but I had lost count and I wanted to make sure I got past 150. I’m pretty psyched on this list. Most of the problems are well known classics. I didn’t even get down to the Gibb’s cave area. I think next time I could easily hit 200 points. Especially if I planned a little better. 30 problems in one session, especially on a hot day, is very draining. My skin is trashed and my toes really hurt (I’m also breaking in new Miura VS’). Having a few more hard problems in there would help for sure.

Circuiting is a great alternative to spending an entire day sessioning a project. You get a lot of mileage. Joining someone else’s circuit is good too because you usually climb new problems or at least one’s you don’t do often.

Do any of you guys have a Squamish circuit that you want to share here? It doesn’t have to be for points. It could be a warm up circuit, a V5 only circuit, a “Problems that start with S” circuit… you name it!

She’s too modest to tell everyone herself so I’ll do it for her. Vikki Weldon sent Division Bell in Chekamus Canyon, Squamish yesterday! It happened on her first attempt at around 8:00pm. The temps had cooled off considerably in the evening, but it was still too warm in my opinion. We didn’t talk about it however, nothing negative! Her determination paid off, rewarded with a hefty accomplishment.

So this begs the question: Is Vikki the first female to redpoint Division Bell? I’m 99% positive she is. Furthermore, how many other Canadian women have climbed 13d recently? I can’t think of many that have challenged the level that Jola Sandford pushed 10 years ago. Come on ladies, step it up!

Vikki first got on The Bell in September, 2008. She says that it’s the longest time she’s spent working a route. There’s no doubt Division Bell is hard. I’ve seen it spew off many strong, capable climbers. The moves are powerful and parts of it are technical. It makes sense that Vikki, a strong technical climber, suits the route well.

Vikki Weldon knee-dropping her way through the crux of Division Bell, 13d.

So I gotta say that I feel privileged to witness such a noteworthy ascent. Great work Vikki! You’re an inspiration to climb with. Now it’s time to start working Pulse!!