big wall fiesta

Come back in Januari

2008-11-21T05:24:00.000-08:00

For those who don't know us very well: that wasn't us on the pictures in the last post. We are terrible surfers, so there would have been no point in showing real pictures of us surfing.

We're back in Europe for the moment and will not be updating our blog until Januari... another Patagonia adventure....

Climb on!

Some surfing in Ventura

2008-10-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

Picture 1: Sean riding a big wave

After tackling El Capitain, we allowed ourselves a few days off climbing and went to Ventura to visit Patagonia and enjoy the surf. Here are some pictures of our trip.

The people from Patagonia were really nice and they did a good job introducing us to surfing.

Picture 2: Nico encounters a new friend.

Picture 3: One of the girls working for Patagonia

New free route on El cap - The secret passage

2008-10-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

That's it! The eagle has landed! In a five day free mission on El capitan, we put up a new free route on its right side. It starts off on "Eagles way" and finishes on "bad to the bone" (two aid lines). We found a secret passage to a section we thought to be impossible : an allmost invisble laser-cut seam barely provided enough holds to bypass the blank section.

Bringing the jamming to a new level.

2008-10-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

Our band has recently made a big step, commercializing on a broader scale. The success has reaped its fruits and demand has been overwhelming. From exclusive concerts high up on El Cap to wedding ceremonies. We've been struggling to find time to climb...

Congratulations to Jon and Eiko and thanks for a beautiful day.

In search of the Eagles way.

2008-10-04T16:45:00.000-07:00

We just spent four days on El Capitan looking for the Eagle. We know where he is but we haven't caught it yet. The eye of the eagle is the key.

We've been working on trying to free the eagle...

This is a line just to the right of Zodiac following a steep left leaning dihedral... we're going to need a lot of Belgian fries to power up for this one...

Yosemite jamming

2008-09-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

We have moved our jamming sessions to Yosemite Valley (California)... unfortunately the rangers do not seem to recognize musical talent... But fear not... we will not be broken... We have had some good sessions on El Capitan (more news on that soon).

Last week we Climbed the North West regular route on Half Dome with some friends (Sean on-sighted the free variation) . Amazing climbing... and good fun, cause there was 7 of us on the route moving at the same speed... good atmosphere.

When we got back down the bear had eaten all our food which we had hung up in a tree... The bear knows the drill... as soon as we were one pitch off the ground he ran up the tree... we yelled but the bear just laughed back at us...

Sean also had a nice morning wake up... "In the middle of the night I could here my backpack next to me moving. I thought it was Nico trying to get something. Then I started imagining that it might be a bear and I wondered what I would do if the bear started eating me. Being inside my sleeping bag I had had no way of defending myself. I turned around and there was a bear right in front of my face! I started shouting as hard as I could thinking my life was over... The bear ran away... Exciting way to wake up I tell ya!"

Look good in Squamish

2008-09-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

The 3 golden rules of rock climbing:

1) Look good

2) Be cool

3) Safety third!

We're back in Squamish. Slowly heading south towards Yosemite...

There's a lot of bouldering going on... the POWER is coming back! TchECkkk!!!

We hope to fit right in when we get to the US with our new look... Remember kids: "look is everything" and "the way you look is the way you climb!"

More exciting news coming soon!

The crown jewel of the Canadian Rockies

2008-09-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

Yamnusca: The crown jewel of the canadian rockies. That's what it says on the front cover of the Guidebook.

Our friends Chris, Cody and Ian, showed us around some of the climbing around Canmore. Canadian limestone. Yamnusca: adventurous multi-pitch. We searched the guidebook for the hardest route: " Gestiegenheid" 8 pitches 5.12 c R. The description used words like: loose rock, death block, bad gear and plenty of potential for getting hurt...

It seemed as good a line as any to try...

While I was climbing the 5.12a R pitch (5th) a little voice kept repeating in my head: "plenty of potential for getting hurt, plenty of potential for getting hurt..." It made the climbing pretty interesting... I was almost disappointed to find quite a few bolts along the way... good thing I skipped a couple. (seems like it might have been rebolted since the guidebook)

However we had our share of excitement when on the second last pitch (5.10+ one of the easiest pitches) a big jug broke (before I had clipped the first bolt) and I went flying over Nico landing about 5m below him... Luckily it was a good place to fall. There were definitely other sections of climbing were it was better not to come off...

So the Crown Jewel has some pretty adventurous climbing... a fun outing for sure!!

Many thanks to Chris, Cody and Ian we had an awesome time hanging out with you guys!!!

white out in the Bugaboos...

2008-09-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

It was still dark in the tent even though it was late morning (almost noon)... We didn't understand what was going on until we opened up the tent and discovered that we were buried in snow! It had snowed 20 cm during the night! It was still snowing hard, and everything was white. Visibility was about 2m. Sean went out to empty his blather and almost got lost trying to get back to the tent! It was like swimming in mashed potatoes. Looks like the Bugaboo season is over early this year. It was time for us to pack up and leave. We had 14 days of food left... so we stuffed ourselves, eat as mush as we could, and started swimming true powder snow over the glacier with big heavy backpacks. Suffering. Crawling. Navigating in the white stuff hoping not to get lost...

We had a couple of short windows and managed to get a small glimpse of the rock faces: everything was plastered...

Although there were still plenty things we wanted to do up there, the weather decided it is time for us to move along...

Wide Awake Corn Flake

2008-09-05T15:41:00.000-07:00

A lot of snow... The bad weather came in, and we went out for a couple of days... back to Golden to fuel up. We got back up with our buddy Ben Ditto who joined us for a ride, but there was a lot of snow on the peaks. So we opted to try some smaller spires while the bigger ones clean up. We decided to try and free this amazing wide crack climb called "Wide Awake" 8 pitches, 5.10 A2 (400m). With binoculars from the ground, we spotted this huge flake in the shape of a gigantic ear, just to the left of the crux pitch. We decided to go take a look at it. A delicate slab traverse on razor blade crimps and crystals for the feet, brought us to a roof crack followed by a enormous flake (25m) the width of a corn flake... We could see all the way true it! Would have been scary for some! We named our variation "Wide Awake Corn Flake" (5.12). Yeah buddy!!!

East creek jamming!

2008-08-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

The day after freeing Doubting Millennium we took a rest day. Our friends (Ines, Jon and Chris), on their way to the Becky-Chouinard, joined us for a little morning jam at our home. The Mandolin was on fire!!

The next day, the weather went rotten... we came back down off the mountain to give you more exclusive news...

Chased by lightning

2008-08-21T18:29:00.000-07:00

The night was quiet, almost too quiet...We reached the summit of the Minaret via a new direct finish. The sky looked clear... We were psyched to keep going to the summit of South Howser Tower.

A few hundred meters of simulclimbing brought us from the top of the Minaret to the summit of south Howser, just before midnight. Our psyche turned to fear when we saw what was coming towards us from the other side of the mountain. A big black zeppelin flashing and roaring was approaching fast...We rushed down as fast as we could, and started rappelling down the Minaret. The storm was faster than we were and all hopes of survival were lost when our ropes got stuck. We decided to sit on a small ledge (500m from the ground) to await our destiny and pray that being electrocuted by lightening would give us mutant powers. Our fear changed to ecstasy, when for the second time today, we noticed that a thunderstorm was passing right next to us. We just sat back and watched in awe as we admired the best lightning show we've ever seen. The lightning struck hard down below in the valley and started a forest fire.

We climbed back up, got our ropes and continued our rappels. Once on the ground we still had to walk back to base camp... a full 50m away!

1:30 am, after almost 20h of climbing we were back at east creek base camp ready for a jamming session...

Check out the lightening picture we took from the ledge!!! (picture 1)

Picture 2: Cumbre!

Picture 3: Nico feeling the stress during the rappels.

Picture 4: Sitting ducks on a ledge, waiting to be fried

Doubting the millennium

2008-08-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Black line is Doubting the millennium 5.12 600m

Green line is the variation we climbed last week : Millennium escape 5.12- 600m

One rivet and 3 copperheads to protect the crux... Snowflakes started falling down, a thunder storm was coming in... Maybe it's time to go down?

After having climbed a new free variation of Doubting the Millennium last week, we were psyched to try and free the real line of Doubting the Millennium (an old A3 aid route) which we knew would be harder, but a more striking line. This time we decided to get an alpine start, to give us more time to tackle the crux. So with the help of the full moon we were on the wall at 5am, and by noon we were in good timing, just below the crux pitch, a thin crack going straight up from a 4 pitch corner leading to a good ledge. Suddenly the weather changed and in no time a big thunderstorm started coming closer while Nico was aiding the pitch. For fear of being struck by lighting Nico rushed to finish the pitch and started rappelling as fast as possible. Just as we were about to pull the rope we noticed that the storm might just miss us and even though it didn't look very stable we decided to hang around a little longer... There was tension in the air but we decided to go back up... we stressfully worked the crux pitch threatened by strong winds, black clouds and lightening in the distance. Surprisingly the bad weather kept its distance giving us enough time to redpoint the pitch. Then the sky looked less hostile... or so we thought... We kept moving towards the summit...

Lost Feather Pinnacle

2008-08-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

To test Sean's back one last time before trying something long and hard we decided to try to open a new route on a neighbouring spire called the "lost feather pinnacle". We choose a beautiful dihedral system leading into an intimidating black roof. We were surprised to run in to bolted belays on the first part of the climb, but after the crux pitch we found no trace of human beings. So we don't know wether we finished a new line or freed an existing aid route, but the climbing was exceptional!! 7 pitches of incredible quality! Some of the more memorable moments were when Sean pulled on a big flake which started moving and cracking and Sean nearly shit in his pants. Or when Nico approached the big black roof which was wet and prayed for our only number four camelot to be wide enough for the crack... Luckily it was and we could finish the route fisting and grunting like a grizzly bear in heat.

A five star route!

The big dihedral.

Below the black roof.

Summit picture.

Fingerberry jam

2008-08-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sean woke up one morning and could barely move because of a terrible pain in his back. Carrying heavy backpacks, long days of climbing, hauling, hanging belays, who knows the cause... We ran back down to Golden for a couple of days rest, food, hot shower and the Chiropractor. Feeling a little better we headed back up and fixed the back on a crack named "Fingerberry jam" (5 pitches on the pigeon feathers). Amazing climbing! Thanks to Topher Donehue for this visionary line!

Bringing the sunshine back to the Bugaboos

2008-08-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's raining and snowing hard outside our tent.... little lakes are being fired down from the sky, days without end...

there's only one way to bring the sun back... you know it needs to be done...

(please feel free to look at other posts while this video is playing,...

be aware however that you might miss out on some crucial facial expressions)

This is just a small sample from hours and hours of jamming.

New posts below!

New free route on the Minaret

2008-08-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

The rope drag was pulling me down as I was starting to sketch out in this flaring chimney, my foot gently leaning on a big loose block. I could hear Nico shouting something. What's he going on about? Time to put in some protection...I looked at my harness: not much left, I must have done almost 60m... I put in a terrible looking green alien and try to pull up slack to clip it... I just need 10 more cm... Nico's shouting is as clear as blue sky now: "End of the rope!!!". Oh shit, trouble... I need to down climb to a lower ledge... "ROCK!!!" I yell from the top of my lungs as the loose block throws itself into the void and I start sliding down the chimney... I barely manage to stop myself as I see the chunk of granite ricocheting off the wall straight towards Nico... "ROCK! ROCK!" Miraculously it missed him by mm's....

Flaring cracks, fiddly gear, offwidth, hollow sounding granite stalactites, splitter hands: the ingredients to the free route (probably new) we climbed on the Minaret. An all free variation of "Doubting the Milenium"... There are still a lot of files on our desk at the office....

Daily hygiene

2008-08-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Daily hygiene is always our great concern. To our younger fans: don't forget to wash yourself every day!

More very exciting news coming very soon!

Views from East Creek

2008-08-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

We moved our base camp to east creek... What an amazing place! Check out our tent under the Mandala boulder! We're mostly on our own here at east creek... everybody else seems to be in the first valley (Appelbee) but fear not! Rumors have it that some friends might be joining us soon... we hope they bring their instruments . Sitting in the tent all day waiting for it to stop raining and snowing can make you go a little mad...

More Becky-Chouinard

2008-08-12T15:42:00.001-07:00

Conditions were pretty alpine... we've never seen conditions like that at our local crag Freyr in Belgium.
I would like to take this opportunity to say hello to all our friends in Freyr, hopefully there having a good season and not drinking too many beers at the Chamonix bar without us. Cheers!

Becky-Chouinard

2008-08-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

It was snowing hard as we approached the summit, digging and swimming through deep snow and rock. We'd just climbed the Becky-Chouinard route with Chilean Juan. He's been up here in the Bugaboos for weeks now and is almost a local. "Look at me, I'm an Alpinist" I shout down at Nico. We're obviously a lot more confident on the mixed grounds of snow-ice and rock than we used to be.
"Alright guys lets take a victory picture!" Nico screamed through the wind. The three of us gathered up and hugged on the summit of South-Howser, while Nico held the camera as far away as possible to take the picture. Suddenly bzzzzzz....Just as he was about the press the button, we heard some thunder rumbling in the distance and we started to feel electricity in the air. Sean having the longest beard could feel it the most... like trillions of bees going through his beard... "We need to get down fast!" There was so much snow up there we couldn't find the rappel stations... We were running all over the summit like chickens without heads digging in the snow. Quickly we threw in some nuts and started to abseil down. Luckily from there on we found the rappel stations...and as we started lowering we knew our chances of getting hit by lightening were diminishing. Needless to say we were happy to be alive when we hit the glacier. A fine adventure and great fun with Juan! Unfortunately we didn't get that victory picture....

Lee's first experience on a glacier...

2008-08-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

An exciting moment when Lee (in his tennis shoes without crampons) had a little slip on an icy slope... Nothing to be alarmed about...

Bugaboos arrival

2008-07-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Big impressive walls in an alpine setting: we're in the Bugaboos... No more distractions like in Squamish! Yesterday we climbed "sunshine crack" in the shade with Minnesota Lee. It was his 26th birthday so we had a good old party up there with a square of chocolate on top of snowpatch spire. The climbing was amazing, splitter cracks the whole way up!! It feels nice to be in the remote mountains, the only sounds being the glaciers cracking and the wind blowing. The mandolin and the flute are already up there so the jam sessions will keep going. Food is next on the list of things to bring up. This morning we woke up to a snowstorm and a little lake in our tent... we need to start our 3h hike back up there now... hopefully the weather will get better....

Cobra crack secret

2008-07-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard the "big" news: Nico climbed the famous "Cobra crack"!!!! But what people don't know are our secret training regimes. These next few lines are world exclusive, for our blog fans only! In fact, Nico's secret training consists of eating a diet of exclusive "frites" or Belgian fries...(sorry frenchies but it's not French). Being abroad it's been very hard to find all the right ingredients and cooking tools (no friteuse here), so Nico had to improvise, but it worked out well in the end. The frites were the perfect antidote against the cobra bites!

Sean on the other hand, didn't eat as many "frites" and choose a different training regime consisting of lifting heavy granite boulders above his head.... it appeared not to be as efficient. Thank you Mr Lemens (only Belgian specialists will understand).

More exciting exclusive news to follow soon!

And thanks to our fans for all the support!

Boogie till you puke!

2008-07-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

We could hear the deep drum'n bass rattling our windows as we pulled into the dusty parking lot. Climbers from all around decked out in 80's apparel were bopping their heads to the rhythm. After a long day of offwidth suffering, and the snake in the bag (alright Nico!!!), we lived up to the name of the route and "boogied till we puked" !

Here are some pictures of boogieing with our friends: Didj Sam, Sandy the energizer and Danielle la loca. Rumour has it that Sean and Nico might not be climbing together anymore...

Big wall fiesta music label!

2008-07-17T12:54:00.001-07:00

When we step off the rocks, that's actually when the real jamming starts. Didjeridoo, guitars, mandolins, banjos, tin whistles, jambe's, mouth harps and singers all join for some free style music sessions. The technique doesn't matter, the spirit is the skill! Everyday more and more musician from all over the world are joining our band and we are please to say that agenda is already overbooked with concerts. Please contact our manager for further requests --> actiondirect@bigwallfiestamusiclabel.com

Learning how to climb like a Zombie!

2008-07-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

In the learning process of climbing you go true different phases... and it's good to experiment and try new approaches...

Yesterday I went to the Zombie cave to try "Zombie Roof" a splitter roof crack. I was very lucky to meet the Zombie and he was a very good mentor to me. My climbing style has completely changed and I will never forget what I learned from the Zombie. From now on I will never go climbing without my skull. Thanks to the zombie for letting me do the Zombie roof.

Check out the Zombie's special taped gloves!!

The Squamish life and Friends

2008-07-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Life in Squamish is though: Slacklining, river dipping,

jamming, partying, socializing, eating,...

and sometimes crack climbing, bouldering and

sport climbing.

But we're hanging in there and our moral is still high.

We might have to take a brake in the Bugaboos soon,

to recover from all this hardship.

We appreciate all the support from our fans.

This is the only thing that keeps us going!

We love you all.

Peace and love!

Here's a picture of the beautifull crack climb "Magical Dog".

And the second picture our hippie friends Matt, Sandy and

their two dogs Emma & (name to come soon).

Peace out!

Black Dyke

2008-07-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

We don't have a topo so we have to be a little inventive when it comes to choosing our routes. The most obvious line on the Chief is a route called "Black Dyke" (12 pitches), basically it's a black dyke of basalt rock running all the way up the granite rock face. Pretty practical when it comes to route finding: just follow the black line of rock which leads you to the top. 2 crux roof pitches, a battle of jungly slopers, and chicken wing dyno into slot, very different climbing than the usual granite climbing in Squamish.

Check out the black dyke all the way to the ground on the first picture.

Sean doing the Johnny Dawes pose, making sure that nobody is catching up with us. (second picture) (click for larger version)

More exciting big news coming soon!!!

New 5.13 offwith in Squamish

2008-07-08T18:30:00.001-07:00

On the way down from the Chief, we found what could be the hardest Offwidth in North America. We quickly sent this new extreme test piece...

Then we brought some friends along to test the incredible difficulty of it!

They confirmed the grade.

(check out the backpack in the second picture!)

Chrono on the Chief!

2008-07-08T18:06:00.000-07:00

Top speed climbers from around the world... you better watch out because we are going fast!!! After a full day of bouldering, 1h 20 min for "Angels Crest" (5.10, 13 pitches) on the Chief. We shaved off about half of the recent Nose speed record by Hans and Yuji. And to succeed all tactics and skills were combined... even tree climbing!!

But even if we push the standard of climbing we would like to comfort our families. we are in good health taking good care of ourselves, always with the best possible hygiene.

Squamish music

2008-07-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a little song I composed specially for all my fan out there!

Samurai crack warrior

2008-07-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the Squamish Campground at the same time as a Japanese climber, his name is Yoshida. Now he's our neighbor, he always seems very quiet and discreet and rarely seems to come out of his tent. Recently we found out that he's a bit of a legend of Japanese climbing. Twenty years ago he did the first ascent of a very hard crack in Japan, nowadays it's rated 5.14 which means that at that time it was probably (one of ) the hardest crack climbs in the world. Now he's 45 and came here to Squamish for three months with just one objective... to climb "Cobra Crack" a climb which is potentially the hardest crack today. He's totally committed even to the point of adapting gear loops to his harness specially for friends, to place them faster. He works the route for a full day and then takes a couple of days rest rarely coming out of his tent. We suspect that he practices intense samurai meditation...

It's very inspiring to see somebody so committed and we really hope that he does it! Gamba!!!

Here is a picture of sharing beta with a samurai!

Environmentally sensitive area

2008-07-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

Squamish power

2008-07-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

We've been doing quite a bit of bouldering here. The quality of the problems is insane! Usually we start our day with a bouldering session, then move on to some rope climbing and then finish off with some music jamming. All of this is preparation and training for upcoming business... We like to be well prepared!

Today we're taking a well deserved rest day after climbing "The Shadow" yesterday... we're feeling pretty beat up. "The Shadow" is a slick test-piece dihedral without any holds, where only bad ass, calf pumping stemming can make you move up the next millimeter of rock. A full on battle with friction. First climbed by legendary Peter Croft, it's a magnificent 7 pitch route up the big Chief (the El Capitan of Squamish, except smaller).

Here's the victory picture on the summit of the Chief.

First day at school

2008-06-29T14:53:00.000-07:00

That's it! We just climbed! After about a week of abstinence, touching smooth granite feels like an orgasm...at least for Sean. After some bouldering we got right into the business in hard thin overhanging cracks. Just the good spanking we needed! But we will be back for more. Squamish granite really is exceptional!

The road to Squamish

2008-06-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

We found a ride from San Francisco to Squamish with Toby. Unfortunately after a 15 hours non stop drive Toby wasn't allowed over the Canadian border because his relaxed attitude didn't satisfy the customs officer... A real bummer for Toby but it probably didn't take him very long to find other climbing options... and for us that's where the adventure started... 5 am we started hitchhiking towards Vancouver with all our gear!

As soon as we arrived is Squamish we were so exhausted we decided to go for a short nap but it turned out longer than expected... damn! Still no climbing... tomorrow is going to be a big day!

San Francisco jamming

2008-06-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

We've just arrived in San Francisco, we bought some important supplies... which will assure the success of our trip... we found a lift to Squamish (Canada) and were just about to start our 20h drive... No more farting around now! Where's that rock?

San Francisco jamming pictures with Jon and Eiko fotos click here.