Mont Buet

difficulty: f
altitude: 3096 m
date: July

Geneve, Friday noon, 39 degrees. We need escape to the mountains and very high otherwise bodies would be boiled. The temperature is little bit more acceptable at Ref. du Grenairon. If not the mountains around this place is worth to visit. When I arrived I said: "This is the smell of India." Some goats were staring at me from the roof of the first building like it is me who is weird down at the path and not them at the roof. The Mantras fluttering in the wind. The Tibetan flag next to the chalet. I enjoyed the chalet, its staff, cheese and food in general, sleeping, interesting drawings on the walls ... 

5:30 breakfast and walking trip to Mont Buet. There are some more technical parts not recommended to older people. We had the seats and the rope with us but it wasn't really needed. We planed the trip as a traverse of the mountain as it is much for fun to use different route down (see the map).

When we arrived to the summit I was stunned by the number of runners there. Since Kilian's epoch, I always feel like a looser at the summit with my big mountaineering boots. Yes, those nice times when just few people with their old damaged touristic equipment visited the summit are gone. If you don't come with shorts and running shoes you are not cool any more. I thought about to donate Kilan my old boots "Numero Uno". I would bet then that the summits of Alps wouldn't look like Salomon fashion show any more. This plan has one small issue, Kilian would probably not fit into my foot size.

But back to the descent. It was quite exhausting but finally we arrived to some small river where I ended up with screaming like a Homo Neandrtalis in very cold water. After a while, Martina was screaming with me. Few beers in the chalet close to it and long trip back to the boiling car.

Non-stop run - Low Tatras (Slovakia)

difficulty: f...ing tough
altitude: ~2000 meters 
date: June 
total elevation:~2450 meters
length: 47.5 km 

All the pictures and information can be found at official page: non-stop run
The map have been designed by TrackProfiler: trackprofiler

This is another interesting experiance, another approach to the mountains, another proof of your strength, another way to get at very limt  (both physically and psychically).

The family of my girlfriend (and soon also my family) was a great supporting team. They brought me to the place of start. I think all of us were quite shocked by the people there. My original ambitions quickly disappeared in that crowd of muscles with Salomon tattooed all around. "Great job, Kilian." I told myself counting that few people not having Salomon boots. There would be certainly much less people 10/20 years ago. I would like to see similar positive increase with orienteering, which is certainly more extreme and natural sport but due to media not that cool nowadays.

The race: long painful run, anything else. Several refreshment stations, even more than officially announced, nice organization, perfect supporting team in the pass "Hliadelske sedlo". I was looking forward for them for all painful 36 km, and then I just expressed all the complains and nasty words I had thought of last 10 km (sorry guys I wasn't able to laugh at that point).  The last 12 km was a hell. Half-marathon runners joined us at that point what wasn't really a pleasure as they were much faster than we and we were surely obstacles for them. Also the race was leading little bit differently than announced what destroyed the last piece of my psychical health. I was even more upset when a first woman flew over me like it would be just morning jogging.

Some hints for the next time:
- train more
- train running down
- do not run with the stones in the boots during the race
- start slower
- be polite after 30 km, there can be children!

My place in final rating wasn't very good, 44th place, but also not very bad. There were 270 runners at the start but only 193 finished that race. Finally, I am happy about that - this result gives me space for improvements but not demotivate me completely!

a lot of stony paths and downhill running!

This man at the picture above is my hero. His name is Pobuda Jan and he is 61 years old. He finished this race at 59th place what is even more inspiring for people of his age as well as for me. Similar words belongs to Trombik Emil who was born in 1946 and completed the race. 

Spitzkopf and Martinswand

We had a very nice summer climbing trip to Vogesen full of nice adventures but rather than talking about them I describe very briefly only the climbing part of that.

The map of the region can be found here:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/48.0328/7.0165&layers=C

there are two challenges which we wanted to achieve:

• Spitzkopf (very nice easy climbing trip)
• Martinswand (paradise for climbers of each level)

Spitzkopf

It is a long tour over the two climbing steps and several boulders. If one checks the map above it starts at the point where "Reidwald" is written and follows the ridge up to Le Hohneck. I have already climbed it once in Winter with Martina when it can turn to real alpine tour, see
Spitzkoepfe

There is no clear way haw to begin. One can basically get to the ridge very easily by the forest from the east side (what we did in Winter). But as it is summer, we wanted to do it little bit more adventurous this time, so we climbed from the south side (first climbing step, two pitched at III-IV level). Then just follow the ridge, very easy climb/walk. One can either use the clear path which always go little bit on the left side in the forest. But then it is just walk and not climbing at all. We tried to follow the ridge really very precisely what means to do some very funny boulders. We got bellow the second climbing second step after few (4-5) hours. The step is last technical part of this route, again climbing at level III-IV, (still doable in trekking shoes).

NOTE: one needs to take his own belay!  Count on 30 meters of easy climb. For me it was some belay every 4 m. The rock is great, you always find something.

Night in the forest bellow Martinswand. Lot of insect. Lot of fun.

Martinswand

it is real classic of Vogesen. I believe that also this wall has a nice history of its first ascents.  I actually haven't found any nice topos of this region. But don't worry and just go there. There is a plenty of climbing routes of each level. Very nice can be very top part, where is a lot of easy one-pitch routes, some of them are quite long. We tried 5a route named with very nasty name I can not publish here.

The highlight of our trip was a route leading over whole Martinswand, roughly 70 m long 5c - nicely belayed two pitches route.

I was already quite happy with that but Venca wanted to climb more and more, so we climbed in the bottom part. Finally, he climbed some rally tough route (6b) and I was just belaying (shame on me, but I wouldn't be able to climb this I think). Suddenly, some German guy appeared. He looked like a kind of wild person with few fingers missing on his hands. We talked a little bit about the area and he told me that Messner visited Spitzkopf as well. Then he climbed with his girlfriend the same route as we did that morning. I saw clearly from his movements that he is more experienced than us.

When we were leaving the area back to the parking place at Gaschney, we followed one older men with pretty bad coordination. Well the path wasn't that easy for person in his shape. He was there with some Alpinveraine which left him alone in this mountains (WTF?) Let me note that I understand and respect him for his passion to go to the nature even in this shape and I hope I will do as well in his age. But any Alpine club shouldn't leave their older members alone in such situation.