8 February 2008

The urge to climb

Posted by Mick under: Climbing .

I used to do a little bit of climbing (both indooors and outdoors) a few years ago, and for the last few months I have had this nagging feeling in my head telling me that i need to get out and dangle from a rope again.

While i have a few climbing and bouldering spots not to far from the ExpeditionOZ HQ in the Upper Yarra Valley as well as the not to distant Victorian Alps, this feeling is more akin to what i had when i spent a few days mucking around the areas of the Matterhorn and the Grand St Bernard Pass in the Swiss Alps in 1992.

[album: http://www.expeditionoz.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/albums/1992/switzerland/]

While i think this whole do i want to hang from a mountain thing over in my head, i’ll leave you with two great videos from YouTube that i found.

The first video shows Gaston Rebuffat climbing the Matterhorn quite a few years ago without a lot of technical equipment or many pre-set anchor points…quite hairy-raising stuff…

The second video is a short trailer from an IMAX movie called “The Alps”. Parts of this clip, which are shot on the Eiger, make my stomach react as if i was in a plane which has just dropped a hundred meters really quickly…it’s such amazing stuff though and makes me really want to get out and climb something big :)

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