Ecrins 2014

It’s not a secret I enjoy the most in combination of different alpine climbing techniques. Maybe I’m a little bit lazy and I don’t climb long variations and high walls, but all this is still in my plans. I assure you that.

After returning from Patagonia I had abstinence crisis because it was almost December and I was still in bad form. In December my Nomics were main tools in my hands. We have spent many days in Italian Karst dry-tooling and my form was growing constantly. I succeeded to climb my Luping (D12+) even if I never believed that I could do it in this winter. It was like my body wasn’t in condition to climb this way, but my head wasn’t right with it, so I found in my body much more energy that I believed I had. Once more I proved to myself what I’m capable of, if “my head is in the right place”. There are only 27 quickdrawsto attach and that’s it … I went from one to another and made it.

After that I went to competition in Ecrins convinced that I won’t be the last one and will be at least near to last year victory. This was, if, I’m not wrong the 25th international ice climbing competition near Briançon. The organization wasn’t like last year and far away from renown when you knew what you can climb, who is climbing, when the competition begun and when it ended, where and who must be in an isolation room … Sure the contest was in great sector with beautiful dry-tooling routes. All climbers had to climb ten routes inqualifications, if only one climber made it to the topof the route he got thousand points. If more than one climber made it to the top, then thousand points were divided with the number of climbers that made it to the top –like in some of the boulder competitions rule. Based on my logic and my taken notes I should have finished in top three, which passed to finales, but I finished not even in top five. When I realized, that nobody of the organizers answered my questions and I couldn’t even see the result list if I can call it like that, I gave up. But one thing is sure, I will never come back to this completion. Nobody likes injustice and so I am not immune to that!

So I left behind this competition, or what it was. Because it’s not worth to annoy ourselves whit things that are out of our power, that way we only discredit ourselves. Day after that we went ice climbing near idyllic village Ceillac. It was incredible to ice climb with Elvis, Anej and Tine.

I wasn’t sure if I could climb the route that we saw, when we entered the Freissinieres valley. Then I looked in the climbing guide and on the net. I figured out that there was the first and I’m pretty sure the only one free ascent climbed by Tim Emmett and Jérôme Blanc-Gras. Maybe this was the reason than I and Anej tried this ascent. The route wasn’t even that difficult, like Emmett described it. We have climbed it in eight hours and there was still enough time for base-jump, like Emmett and Blank planted it and didn’t realized it because of darkness and safety.

Anyway the route is beautiful, there are only three hangers of doubtful quality. I overlooked one, the other two I didn’t rely on and trusted myself. This was one of the first routes in mountains for Anej. He is very good climber certainly he can set teeth when it’s needed also because he was a professional cyclist for ten years. My friend Elvis made some beautiful photos this day.

  • France, Freissinieres, Sous I´oeil des chouas, V, M9 (M8+), WI7, 300m, 8h – Dejan Koren (OS) and Anej Kodele (22.01.2014)

Dejan Koren – DeKo (MONTURA, Singing Rock)