Ice climbing reveals the beauty and thrill of frozen waterfalls, inviting the daring to test their mettle.
Well the annual Ice fest was on in L’Argentière la Bessée in the Ecrin. After last year’s antics I was keen to attempt to get down a ski slope mainly on my feet rather than on my face, crush some ice at the ice climbing and attempt to dry tool my way to the top in the competition that someone had very kindly put me in.
On arrival in the Ecrin it was obvious that it had not snowed for a while, so it couldn’t of been better timing when the first night it dumped around 10 inches. Friday morning we were straight on the case with skiing, and to my shock I must of been getting better every time I dreamed of skiing because I actually made it down a slope without nailing myself and with minimal damage to the knees.
All the time I was pretty worried about the drytooling comp. Now I’ve never done any of this so was getting stressed about getting my ass kicked. It turned out that the warm up routes were two M6s, two M8s and two M10s which if anyone knows the mixed grading scale it’s pretty hardcore. Me and Pete gave it our best shot while climbing around some reasonably strong beefcakes.
After all we came a respectable 7th and 8th place which I was well psyched about.
That night we partied hard and went to the dry tooling final which was on an artificial wall with a big ski jump in front so was an entertaining final with good falls, jumps and music.
On the last day me and Paul chilled while the guys went skiing in Sestrierre. Bored of waiting and all caffeined out, we decided to sabotage their car with some stinky goodness, we found the cheese that had been in our fridge for the last four days, stuck it on the dashboard and fired up the heater for an hour.
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Sierra Vest [Mens]
PrimaLoft® insulated gilet with fleece panels for core warmth on the move
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