Sunday, November 18, 2012

OCTOBER IN SPAIN AND FRANCE

Six months of alpine climbing/ guiding can get pretty tiring, so sport climbing in Spain was a great way to relax and Annie and I head that way. We have the opportunity to meet with two great friends Elias and Bridget and the four of us will be traveling together !!!! Elias it is originally from Spain, so getting around will be pretty easy.
Once in Madrid, we head to the center to check it out. This city it is pretty cool.






We head yo Segovia where Elias is from. 
Segovia it is a very beautiful little town with incredible architecture and very nice people.


  

Doing the tourist thing in Segovia this castle is pretty cool.



Couple of days of resting and getting use to the Spain time we head to a local crag to start climbing.
About a week before I came to this trip and while in the AMGA alpine exam, I had a knee injury that had me little incapacitate in the beginning of the trip.

This little crag was pretty fun.



A day later we had the chance to see the Real Madrid and Barcelona game in TV it was pretty cool people are super passionate about that kind of games and awesome 2 to 2 finish made the game super cool to watch.




The day after the game we head in our way to Rodellar making stops along the way.
The first one, it was a climbing area that is call Fuente Iduena a Small place with a great location: limestone and all the routes where under an old castle. Cool stuff.




After our climb there we head to another cool place that is call Patones.
This place was awesome. Aldo not been super popular there are more than 1,000 routes to climb here !!!!



Great day climbing here and yet the best was just about to come.

Rodellar was our next stop !!!!!
This place is world class destination for sport climbing with over 2,000 routes from 5.8 to 5.15 makes it one of the coolest places to rock climb in the earth. 


The caves are huge and limestone it is everywhere mazing view of the hole en tired place.




One of the coolest features is call the El Delfin.  A natural arch with climb in all sides.  



A great view from our place. one of our favorites things to do is drinking coffee and checking out the priceless view.



After a nice breakfast we juts got out for the day of climbing. Every day we find a really cool climb, and this one may be top two. It is call Roxy La Palmera a incredible fun pitch of pure tufa climbing.   


From there that's was all we wanted to climb Tufas !!!!!! This other route was super cool too.


After climbing tons of Tufas it was time to head back home cook nice dinner and hang out.
The climbing was juts 10 min walk from town !!!!!


We spend the last few days climbing steep stuff. Time went really fast and it was time to head to Barcelona on our way to France.   


Barcelona it is a very cool city with tons of history and incredible architecture. We spend 4 days checking the City out, Beach and other fun places. 
  




We end up in France in a really cool pace is call ANNECY. Annecy it is where the headquarters of Millet are located.

Before my meetings breakfast need it to happen !!!!


The Millet head quarters are super cool. Here it is where everything happens.

A full day of meetings with super talented designers and other folks that make the gear.

 


Very cool things coming in the next few months. In fact! some of them will revolution the gear industry
stay tune.

Once done in Annecy we head to GRENOBLE to visit a good friend of mine and to go check out the PETZL factory.

The PETZL factory is incredible we got a full tour of the place. It is awesome to see how all the gear is make and see how all the future design gets thought out. Super impress with the factory that I get to represent. 


From the factory we head to our great friend Simon where we spend couple of days traveling around. He show the cool places for climbing but also the town.

Our first day of climbing we went and check out Simons favorite area. Big limestone wall up in the mountains. Unfortunately was raining that day so we decided to head to L'Usine.

L'Usine it is a huge cave out side of Grenoble. it has more than 13 routes from D6 to D14. It is the make for dry tooling in Europe super incredible place.!!!!!!!






Awesome times climbing and hanging out with Simon and friends but it was time for us to head back to Spain to enjoy our last days before starting our way back home.

One of the last places that we check out was the Castillo de Alcazar. This castle it is the oldest and biggest in Europe. Very impressive.





The last in Segovia we head to a new dry tool area that some friends of Elias had develop. the place was pretty fun. some of the routes have never been lead and grades still being figure out. Here are some shoots of the place :




Our trip was getting to an end and Madrid was waiting for us just before flying to the US.



  A day we spend in Madrid before we find out that our flight was canceled due super storm Sandy. We end up stay in Madrid for 5 days before we where able to flight back home.
All and all was a incredible trip. Thanks Annie, Elias, Bridget, Simon and all the other friends that we meet and hang out with for the great times !!!!!!!  
   



Thursday, October 11, 2012

AMGA GUIDE ALPINE EXAM

I just finish with the AMGA alpine exam that took place in the Cascades.
I'm super happy to finish with a long time goal of mine as a mountain guide to be rock and alpine certified.
The hole process took quite long time since in order to fill the pre requisites I had to spend lots of time working and climbing in the alpine terrain, plus I put the process to the side too in to focus in my personal climbing such going to the ice climbing world cup 4 years in a roll and expeditions abroad and climbing hard grades in ice and mixed climbing.

The exam was really fun. The examiners where friends and people who I have work for and people who have been part of my guiding carrier. Extremely knowledge guides. also my fellow guides that where taking the exam had a incredible great experience it was great lo learn from everybody there.
It was a total of three examiners and 6 examines. They where :

Examiners:
Tom (chuck norris ) Hargis
Jefe (el jefe) Ward
Vince (the american psycho) Anderson

Examinies:

Andres (the colombian missile) Marin
Mark (the next pin) Falender
Brian (one ice axe)  Warren
Andrew (sketchy) Councel
Lyle ( the fireman )
Mike (the man) Sousy

Truly was an honor share a rope with all this folks and thanks to you all for the great energy that we had on the exam.

The weather was incredible for the entire 10 days of the exam, something that it is very rare that time of the year in the cascade range. 

In this photo, our first objective. The North ridge of Torment peak a rare route that have very little info.
Our team was Lyle, Vince and Myself.  
The route is the central sky light 2, 000 feet of chaos climbing keep our spirits up !!! 


After finishing this objective we head to the North face of Shuksan.
This time I share rope with Jeff and Brian.



Great summit photo after climbing the North Face !!!!




All and all it was a great experience the exam and I'm super psyched to be done with it.
Thank to all the friends that help me getting ready and help me with all the little details that the exam have.