Monday 9 May 2011

China

Well on arriving at Getu river southwest china  two days of travel in the bag,  Bristol-London then flight one heathrow - Beijing  10 hours then three or so hours to change plane followed by a three hour flight to Guiyang then a taxi to hotel in the city. Day two picked up by a driver then a 7 hour drive into the middle of know where, that just so happens to be not only beautiful but also where the arch of winners is! 
So on arriving Erwan our host from Petzl thinks the best thing to do is go look at the crag this involves a little walk,  a river crossing helping the motorbikes on and off the small boat then a small set of steps (1477 steps)up into the cave. And what a cave well more of a arch than cave 100 M across 300 M long and 80M high at it's lowest point! With a head wall and wings covered in tufa.








So the brief, with a supply of two thousand bolts, a team of climbers from all over the world manly france Spain and England, bolt as many routes as you can. Right then mission on.
With accomidtion sorted and the food menu worked out I.e two weeks of rice and noodles with spice and random stuff put in to make it yummy, we set to








to get our eyes in we had a climbing day ( a few routes were put up in October ) to see what we were up against, in the arch it was a stiff learning curve as the routes were totally nails and so hard to onsight  as the rock is smooth and all looks the same! But a few new lines stood out to andy and me some easier routes just out side the main cave so we set to bolting five lines over the next few days most in the mid 6 grade. 






with this done we went for a wonder to have a look at the rest of the valley finding with two of the French boys a nice crag that ended up being called fish crag because there is a painting of a fish at the bottom of the cliff! 
As we could get round the tp of this cliff be a little track in the il side things moved along a little swifter as we could bolt top down instead of bottom up, much faster.
Between the four of us we then had the crag set on four or so days with 15 routes from 6c to 8a  not bad I thought.
after this the weather tok a turn for the worse and tho not proper rain we had a fine drizzle so Andy and I hung up our drill did a little climbing and ran for Beijing to be tourist's for a day or so.
meanwhile the rest of the team were going big in the cave with dani bol
Ting an 8 pitch monster thru the middle that will be in the mid to high 8s to climb Toni putting a five pitch route at 7c+ on the left and deago bolting the crag classic a five pitch 7b on the right.
Also many new routes put up in and out of the cave leaving the valley with about 250 new pitches from 5 to 9 not a bad job boys good work !