"The Humans are D-D-D-D-Dead"

Hurrah for YLE! Finally they've spent my license fee on something I really wanted to watch - I've just seen the first episode of Flight of the Conchords. For no other reason than that it made me laugh:

Jaanankallio: Blackadder Wall

Helsinki region climbers, are you tired of the same old holds? Want something new? Still haven't been able to manage any of the 7a-s and harder? Then - just for you, the all new "Blackadder Wall" at Jaanankallio! Five new routes: four reasonably graded sports climbs from F5- to F6b+, and a trad climb of Finnish 4+. It's fun for all the family!

Jody has done yeoman's work cleaning the muck off and bolting, with a lot of assistance from Simon and a bit from me. Not only did Jody scrub and drill, he's also made this rather nifty topo below. So print yourself a copy and then go and enjoy. And if anyone doesn't know where Jaanankallio is, all the info you need is here.



Click on the topo and you'll get a largish jpeg. Hopefully that will be readable once printed. If anyone has an idea where I could up load the Jody's original PDF, and then have the link to it here, please let me know.

Random International Relations Fact of the Day

Did you know that besides Russia, Nicaragua is the only state in the world to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia? Weird eh? They must really hate 'dem 'der Yankees. The name of Nicaragua's president, Daniel Ortega, takes me back to my childhood - it somehow reminds of me packed lunches at school (ask Thatcher why we didn't get a hot meal) and Arthur Scargill.

Weekend climbing: new route bonanza

Last weekend when Jody and I were at Jaanankallio, I stumbled off through the dense wood at the end of the crag to, umm... do what bears do in the woods. Whilst on this humble mission I noticed another buttress of rock past the main area that actually looked quite good. We fought our way up through the brush for a closer look and indeed it looked very promising. Jod went back mid-week to clean and drill some bolts, and then a squad of us - four climbers and one baby - headed up on Saturday, ready to add some more routes.

Toby on the first ascent of "Baldrick" 4+ (HS 4c)

I cleaned and then climbed the one obvious trad line on the buttress. This went a pretty reasonable grade if you get your technique right and is a nice addition to the cliff that already has a few more moderate trad climbs for newbies to go at.

Jod sends the first ascent of "Lord Flashheart" F5

Jody climbed the first of his new sports routes next, with Simon and I doing the second and third ascents straight after. This is a really nice route, not actually that hard but with pretension to being so, and hence makes you feel pretty cool as you climb it.

Jody hits the jug on the finishing rockover

The holds are good but require big moves between them, but then after the juggy yarding the top out require getting your foot high and rocking onto it with nothing much for your hands until you grab the top jug. Flash by name, flash by nature - indeed!

Coffee time

The epoxy was still curing on the other lines so a coffee break was in order and a nappy change for baby L who seemed to be enjoying the spectacle of Mum and Dad climbing from the comfort of her carry-cot.

The crux of "Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop" 6a+(?)

Jody then did his second first ascent of the day with the delightfully name We Jock... I attempted the second attempt but fell off the crux a few times, before finally making the moves to dog an ascent.

Through the crux, but a slightly balancy move still to go...

It felt really hard and tenuous and I was going for the "reach dependent crux" ploy to excuse my failure, until Simon stepped in and cruised a clean second ascent. As Simon is a good inch or two shorter than me, the reachy excuse was not so believable anymore, so I'll just have to put the effort in and redpoint it next time.

Success!

So all-in-all a good day. Regular readers will remember last week's encounters with two "melanistic individuals" of the Vipera Berus genus, and hence might see a connected theme in the names of the new routes!

It shouldn't actually be funny...

...but it is. So very very funny.



Some people either a) have no shame, b) no memory or c) as Jon Stewart suggests, "are lying sacks of shit".

Hesari Int. - still can't work the spell checker...

I've moaned twice before, but clearly no one is listening. Anyway, today was a real corker for typos and other stupid mistakes in Helsingin Sanomat International. One article has a duplicate word in its title of all places!
"Come study with us and you can use use a laptop for free!"
Then the article on the Finnish responses to the Georgian crisis manages two typos in one article:
"The first time such a meeting was called over the Georgian conflict was some two weks ago, on the initiative of President Tarja Halonen..."
And:
"Even though he does not believe the NATO option is a topical one, he does not think there is any reasno to compromise on the subject."
And then in the piece on the Finnish OSCE observers they call them "military observers of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe", it has been the Organisation of... not the Conference of... for a good couple of decades now - hence OSCE, not CSCE. I'm sure there was another typos as well somewhere that I can't find now, but basically that's what I noticed in five minutes of reading through.

Firefox spellchecks everything I write here automatically, I presume a national newspaper might be able to find something similar?!

Spooky technology and gear porn

My iPod likes Francophone hip-hop. I'm sure Apple will claim there is some clever algorithm that means the shuffle function is completely random, but I don't believe it. I've only got one MC Solaar album on it, but Solaar comes up more often on the shuffle than any other, I swear. The fact that my iPod is developing artificial intelligence should worry me, but actually we're cool. If it didn't have such good taste in music though, I might be concerned.

And then the gear porn. Patagonia, maker of clothing that I like too much, has a new very cool multimedia section of its site - "the Tin Shed". Amazing films of Sonnie Trotter flying off Rhapsody; House, Anderson and Prezelj making cutting edge alpinism look like a fun day out; but showing the utter sad gear freak that I am, Steve House talking us through his ice axe collection was just, as Steve would say, "super cool". I'm totally in sympathy with his suggestion that you never get rid of an old axe, although my family both in Finland and England might not agree.

The Tin Shed works via Flash so I can't do links to the exact films. You need to just go in and explore.

Close encounters of the poisonous kind

Heading to Jaanankallio

Something a bit Constable-esque about the clouds and haystacks don't you think? Yesterday was the first day since I think April that I've worn a woolly hat for climbing. Autumn is on it's way, indeed this morning, suitably for the first day of September, the thermometre said 0.0 degrees at 7 am!

Snake in the grass

Whilst walking over toward the cliff, I suddenly noticed a something slithering in the grass, at first it was so black it looked like the world's biggest slug, but was moving quite a lot faster than a slug would! Just another hundred yards on we met another, this one though was too out in the open so rather than making a "run" for it, turned on us and pulled its head back hissing loudly. Of course the most obvious thing to do in a situation where an angry/scared snake is getting ready to bite is... to try to get close enough to take a good picture, duh.

What you lookin' at?

Vipera berus looking unhappy at getting a Nikon shove in his face. Then again do snakes ever look happy? Black adders I have now found out are called "melanistic individuals". If you compare it to the picture I took of one with the more common pattern, a couple of summer's ago in Eastern Finland you can see the huge difference in colouring.

The crux of Haliba, 6b+

Sometimes going climbing is about a lot more than just the climbing. Last weekend we saw two moose run across the road just as we were getting towards the crag. This weekend the close encounter was more venomous, hence more exciting as we walked over the field to Jaanankallio, near Hyvinkää. Climbing-wise, I didn't do any routes that I haven't done a number of times before and the one 'project' that I tried, I failed pretty hopelessly on, getting psyched out by wet holds on not even the hardest section when trying to lead, and then not being able to do the crux when having another go on a top-rope. But it was a good weekend all the same, a climbing trip on both saturday and sunday, interesting wildlife observed, but family-man balance still kept. I'm just going to have to grow two inches to be able to do the crux of "Haliba".