emi's blog

2011 - changing the game

Regarding my climbing, this year so far has been completely different than the 7 or 8 years before.

Coming home from my trip to Hueco this winter and having had a really amazing and intense time bouldering once more, at the same time I felt like it was time for a change. After so many years of just bouldering and mostly leaving all other types of our sport, like routes, trad or alpine, out of my schedule I simply thought it would be a really interesting and fun challenge to change my game and do something different, not just blocs.

As it was winter I went to the gym and did routes. Lot's of routes, for weeks... My main goal doing that was to get fit for the rock in spring. The amount of great hard sport routes in the local Zillertal Valley is insane and, in terms of quality and quantity, lies above the bouldering there in my opinion. After getting better and better in the gym I decided to take part in a Lead National comp in my origin home town in western Austria. Visiting the parents and doing a comp with quiet the best fitness in years seemed like a good combination worth the effort!

The comp was real fun and went well, the next one of the series was at a close location too, so hey, why not go there as well?!? It turned out all of the four stations of the national Circus were pretty close to Innsbruck so in the end I took part in all of them!

The Austrian Cup circus basically is there to determine who enters the National Team besides the Pros (currently the two ballers Jakob Schubert and Mario Lechner who don't take part in it). And beeing such a busy bee doing all of them and with good results I ended up 3rd overall in the mens category, oh yeah :D

The rock climbing was a bit more epic since the mass of rainy or hot days this spring is messing up lots of redpoint tries on projects with long no-chalking-sections and small crimps. Guess what, it's raining as I write this. Oh well they won't run away and cooler temps will come sooner or later, until then it's good practise.

So the status of this crazy, all so different and fun year is, that I am nominated to enter the IFSC World Championships in Arco this July, starting in all Categories, bouldering, lead and speed! And that's because I got 3rd at the speed comp at the last station of the Nationals... off the couch...

What's next, 2011?????? Can't wait to find out!

The MOON Board is online!

The Moon Board concept is a really simple but powerful idea that allows climbers all over the World to set identical problems and test themselves! Once your Moon Board is built, you can arrange the holds to replicate any number of problems listed on the Moon Board website. There are problems of all grades listed and you can also download a very easy description of how to build your own Moon Board.

So if you have a garage, a big porch or simply charge grandpa's garden hut then go for it, build your original Sheffield's school room inspired training facility!

MOON Board website

Hueco Flash Back - Movie by Flo Murnig

It's on! Flo Murnig's Film of our Hueco Trip! Enjoy!

Climax.tv Issue #6 - Flash Back Hueco Tanks from Flo Murnig on Vimeo.

MOON Interviews

Lots of inspiring short interviews of the whole new team can be found on the MOON website, check it out!

Hueco Flick

Better late than never... :) here comes a little combo of some boulders I had the joy to climb on in Hueco Tanks at the beginning of this year. Filmed by my mates Flo Murnig (dynamo.at) and Ingo Filzwieser who were there with me. To watch it in HD you have to play it on vimeo. Flo filmed a shit ton of stuff and made a proper movie of it wich will be shown on the Climax release party on April 2nd 2011 in Vienna, Austria. I think he will be putting it onto vimeo as well after, I will let you know, should be a crazy movie!

Alright, singing off, been doing a lot of training since the trip, mostly routes and now I have to pack up my shit and get ready for a lead comp (thats right, l-e-a-d!!) tomorrow... sorry my dear forearms, but you are about to face enormous pain in the near future. :D

Enjoy climbing and take care,

Emi

hueco tanks 2010|2011 from emi-moosburger.blogspot.com on Vimeo.

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Hueco #3

Well, it's over again and I am back in Austria as I write this. The last days of our trip have been really epic, lot's of bouldering here and there, snowstorms and icy temps at night... it's all there! Good times for sure.

The climbing days went past really fast and everybody of our crew had sort of a cold once at least so before we knew it the last two climbing days were on the schedule. Day number one was supposed to be our last day climbing on North Mountain. Time to get things done there. For me that ment to get on "Bleeding Brothers", a stiff V12 that climbs out of a cave. The climbing is desperate. Big ass moves, crazy toehooks and heelhooks and compression... Working on the problem on two sessions before it was fun to solve my own beta puzzle and try to link the sequences, wich is the hardest to do on this climb because on the link you have to hold a really slopy bad pocket for your right hand three moves in a row. Each move individually isn't too bad but when you ad them together... you better make sure you hit that hold hard!
I warmed up and felt good. First try I fell two moves before the end. Minutes later I got shut down on the very last hard move because that slopy right hand popped out in the last moment!! Damn! Not only I got super close I also sliced my left hand on the big undercling Hueco that try, blood everywhere... I got real pissed. And that for sure helped in this case. I taped the flapper as good as I could, rested and got really really psyched to take my revenge. I pulled on and forced my way out of the cave very confident and fast. Arriving at the last two crux moves this time I felt positioned well and was perfectly set up. My left hand went for the crimp on the lip, both the toehook and the heelhook stayed and I bounced again lefthand for the lip, stuck it and topped out. What a relief! It's one of those blocs that make this place really unique for me, the climbing is just so crazy!!

The next day was our last and we decided to go to West Mountain because we hadn't been there before and just wanted to climb a lot on boulders that are new to us. We had a nice crew, Me, Ingo, Ida and J-Fred from Norway, Joe and two spanish climbers, Kevin was our guide. We warmed up on some really good easy climbs and then went over to Best of the West V7, one of Hueco's most famous blocs. It really was what everyone promised it to be: fantastic. Crazy holds, big moves... perfect!
After that I set eyes on another mega classic: The Feather V11. I first saw a picture of this bloc in some french climbing mag when I was a kid and since then wanted to climb on it. As I was pretty low on energy resulting from 4 weeks of bouldering and sleeping in the cold I had to act a bit tactically in order to succeed. I started to try the upper part wich is a bit tricky with a brutal knee bar and a lot of possibilities for you feet. The start just looked physical and I thought I'd have the right motivation to do it once I solved the upper part. Wich happened pretty soon, I found my way to do the kneebar section, rested and sat down at the start. Kevin gave me some beta for the start and I pulled of the floor. You have to do a hard gaston move out of your left hand to get into the stand start and surprisingly I did that one right away! I hussled a bit after it because I didn't know how to walk my feet into the kneebar but kept it together and climbed to the top, realizing a bit of a childhood dream, unexpected, on the final day of our trip... I was more than happy!
Not enough yet we went back down and over to Best of the Best V9. It's a long climb (about 20 moves) and after I found my beta for the crux sequence I somehow ran through it, totally pumped, with my arms cramping on the last V2 moves and the mantle... Time to go home!

Looking back we had and amazing time with many many nice people and friends we made and we can't wait to return some day, hopefully soon!

Check out all the galleries for Fotos of our trip!! We also filmed pretty much everything on HD so stay tuned for some clips soon!!!

take care,

Emi

Hueco #2

Life here in Hueco Tanks is getting more relaxing every day. We get up in the mornings and start off the days with a long breakfast in the sun, chilling on the pads, have some coffee... Then it's climbing all day long with burritos after it - perfect!

We checked out a lot of problems all over North Mountain and everybody kinda found his projects and favourite lines... One problem I really wanted to get on was Diaphanous Sea, V12. It's such a cool, pure line, the holds and moves are very very nice and hard to find on a rock climb just like that. I got on it once three years ago but couldn't do any of the moves back then. It's style of climbing is pretty basic: pulling on crimps in a roof. I kinda have a hard time on climbs of this character... coming back stronger and more confident this time I knew that it still will be challenging for sure. This time I first got on it at the end of day on North Mountain, tired and little skin left and to my surprise did all the moves on that first session! So I rested for two days, grew some skin and came back with high expectations on climbing the boulder. But no, I was to shaky that day and always fell on the big crux move where you throw your right hand to the big flake. Also my fingers and tendons started to hurt really bad after a few goes... frustrated I had to call it a day and leave. I was able to finish off the day by doing the amazing Dirty Martini on the Rocks V11 in a few goes wich was nice at least!
I decided to wait some days for when the weather forecast finally pronounced cooler temps (it still has been really really hot!) and climb on other stuff in the meantime. But I couldn't really stick to that plan and so I found myself back on Diaphanous Sea two days later at the end of a long day on North Mountain. But it was windy and overcast, temps were good and so I decided to give it a try or two.
After the burning sensation in my fingertips, caused by a horrible warm up go, disappeared I sat down again and pulled off the floor. And with no expectations or anything else on my mind I simply climbed better on it, stuck the big move perfectly and with surprising ease and moments later stood atop of the boulder... my skin was fried big time but I was just so psyched to have done this super classic line. Lifetime ticklist - check! :D

We are now in the second half of our trip and starting to feel better every day. Skin is getting thick and we are all psyched to get on tours now and explore more of the beautiful climbing this place has to offer.

Emi