Monday, August 03, 2009

climbing near lake baikal

after the trek was over (see previous post) anton (owner of the guiding company) picked all of us up. erick and i were dropped off with him on the way back, about and hour outside of irkutsk for some climbing.

our first clue that it'd be interesting (besides us being completely trashed and tired from the trek) was the amount of food anton brought for us for 1-day. about 30 lbs of food! we hiked into farron rock and cleopatra rock (next to each other) and set up camp.

the area is granite with routes about 10 - 15 m high. very well bolted (better than gym bolting!), most routes very overhung with some jugs, very gym-like. not having climbed in 2 months, we couldn't manage to do much. didn't help that all the routes were very pumpy and the easiest routes started at 6a. erick did lead one route that was really fun, because it was crack the whole way. we sought out the crack, anton avoided it unless he had to use it.

tried about 5 -6 routes and most of them were just too reachy (russian climbers must all be pretty tall) or pumpy or strenuous (heel hook over the head) for us in non-climbing shape.

still it was lots of fun and great to get out on the rock again climbing, even if it is sport climbing. will post pictures soon...

next up, we'll head to arshan, in the sayan mountains a few hours SW of irkutsk for about 5 days. if things go well, we'll be able to climb some of the splitter cracks we've seen, otherwise it looks like an amazing area to hike around in (high mountains, lakes, big peaks, etc).

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