Morschach

The last days I went up to Morschach, which is 5 minutes away from my home town. The time window to visit this area is very small. In spring the temperatures are fastly above the "good conditions" and in autumn you have to wait quite a long time until the temps are low enough for a visit. Additionally all the boulders are in a forest. After rain it could need up to two or three days until the boulders are dry... depending on wind and sunlight.

Anyway... the last weeks we had really nice conditions up there and I did a few nice boulder problems of medium difficulty.

Up there is a classic boulder from Fred Nicole, which is called "L'ame soeur, 8A+". It starts at the line "Vocis terra, 7C", but traverses to the left after the first moves and goes up to the top in the middle of the boulder.
Firstly I climbed "Vocis terra"... a fantastic line!!! This one follows an about 5 up to 6 meters high arete with a tricky move to the top. It would be definitely one of the famous classic lines in Ticino, if this one would be down there.
After my ascent I started to work on "L'ame soeur" and managed to do all the moves until the three. The problem is that you have to do a huge dynamic move to a far hold from there, directly between the rock and a three behind you. If you fall at this move, you may will have a problem then. That could very likely end up with an injury. It is definitely not possible to spot there. This may be the reason, why Fred climbed the line toprope and no one has repeated it since then.

To have a look to this move you must have a partner and try the move one a rope. Unfortunately I wasn't able to have a look on it... but no matter, I'll give it some tries next autumn.

Afterwards I started to work on an undone line directly to the left of "Vocis terra". The original line is called "Crossed road, 7A" and follows the arete on the left together with a small crack on the right. I started to try the line without the left arete just using the crack. It is a three-move problem with some tricky foot changes and every move is getting harder than the one before. As I know this variant is still undone and it seems that this line will be pretty hard.
As I started to work on it I was fastly able to climb all the moves expect the last one. So I thought that it will give a quite short story. By now I was five or six days in the line and I'm still not able to climb it. I had some good looking days as also some really disappointing days. The last one was the worst one... I was even not possible to do the foot changes after the first move, which I did without any problems the days before. And the real crux is starting only then. ;)

body position after the second move...

I'm starting the boulder with a stand start. A sitstart should be possible... but i'm pretty sure that a sitstart will be extremely hard (~8B+).
Even the standstart feels very hard. Fristly I thought that it will be about 7c+ to 8A. Now I'm thinking more in direction of 8A+.... no idea. It is really difficult to assess, due to the few moves, but it feels definitely as one of the hardest I've climbed the last time. BUT... it is absolutely possible that someone is coming, which is climbing it the first try and grade it 7C...!! Veni vidi vici... ;o))

a) Crossed road   7A
b) L'ame soeur   8A+
c) Vocis Terra   7C

Anyway... now it changed fastly and the temps (24°C) are too high for that boulder, respectively for the whole area... at least at the moment.
Let's go back in autumn... now I like to restart some projects up at Murgtal.

cheers