Rain Rain Rain!

So the last few weeks have been going extremely slow.  The rain here seems like it is none stop.  We have had 3 days with no rain in the last 19 days.  Two of those days were spent in the Frankenjura pulling on some pockets and the other none rain day was spent in the dentist office.  We moved into our micro apt. 2 weeks ago, its in a great location.  There is an amazing little pond (assuming man made) with little beaches and blocked off sections for the little kids to play, and a pub for all the elders to enjoy.  We have yet to check out all the hiking trails out our door, once it stops raining I'll be able to check it all out.  Last weekend Julie and I headed east to the Frankenjura to visit our friends Frank and Mandy Byron.  On our way we stopped in Heidelberg and picked up another friend Dave Hume, stuff like sausages in our micro Fiat we flew down the Autobahn doing 160kpm!!!!!  Once at Frank and Mandy's we had to get out and check out the cliffs.  You will all have to forgive me because I don't remember the names of anything so I have to throw out a bunch of numbers.  On Saturday we headed to a nice quiet cliff that was around 45 to 55 ft tall, with 3 to 5 bolts on any one route.  The warm ups that we did (low 11's) were sparsely bolted with 3 bolts on each route.  10ft to the first bolt then another 15 ft to the second and 8 ft to the 3rd then another 8 or so to the single bolt anchor.  They were super fun routes be I think we all over gripped a little trying to get use to the run outs.  After we warmed up we all moved down the wall to check out some of the 5.12s.  We all had a ton of fun on these, the bolts were a bit closer and the moves were a lot harder and more interesting.

Some little 13a in the Frankenjura

Frank Byron

Dave Hume

The insanely run out wall we went to the first day

 The next day we decided to go to an area where Dave wanted to meet up with some friends.  When we walk down the hill the massive, and I mean massive crowds were overwhelming.  These routes were around 25ft tall and there was probably 15 routes on this one particular wall, with around 30 people either climbing/belaying or being complete gumbies.  We decided to check out another little sector that was a little taller and a little less busy.  Here Julie and I warmed up on a few routes that reminded me of a chossier Rifle.  Once warmed up we moved over to a cave with some harder more powerful routes.  Here I punted on a 13a first try and did it on my second try.  Julie decided to check out some of the routes on the left side of that cave, she led everything she got on that day!!!!!  Once we left the Frankenjura I knew I was going to have a super busy week.  The week consisted of getting the Internet working, and going to the climbing gym, dinner with new friends and going to the dentist.  Really busy for ME :) 

Yesterday Julie and I had to go to the "shoe town".  We learned about this town when we first got here and found the climbing there.  In this town there is a shoe museum along side 50 or so shoe stores.  It was interesting seeing all the super old shoes along side Roger Federer's championship shoes, to Hitlers shoes.  Shopping around there wasn't much I wanted and surprisingly Julie didn't see much either.  We left the town with a new shirt and only one pair of shoes, nice cheap shopping day.

Today was once again a crazy rainy day.  We at least made it out to the rock which was extremely greasy.  I did however manage to do a new 13a/b called Magnet Finger.  Once I was done on that I decided to try and give a cool looking 13b/c to the right a try.  This route has a techy  vert section that goes right into an 8 ft roof crux where you grab one of the coolest slopers I have used out side.  Unfortunately I blew the OS when I couldn't hold the core tension with the HUGE swing with the feet cutting.  Next time I guess, hope its drier!