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easter postcard from ukraine 10-Apr-2010 At 4:57:59 PM freesolo

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after a year of bad travel and job decisions, i ended up back in ukraine teaching english, maintaining my sanity at the local bouldering gym once a week. woke up last saturday to drizzle and assumed i'd spend the weekend watching online videos. went into the gym about noon and a couple climbers i met last year asked if i wanted to go climbing outside the city on real rock where the sun was shining. of course, had to weigh all the pro's and con's for about 2 milliseconds. hopped back on the bus to go home and get some gear.

spent about 2 hours in the car driving around kiev picking up other climbers, food, gear and finally started out of town about 3 pm. arrived at the crag about 5pm. nice spot in a forest reserve next to a slow river with a dam upstream-waterfall sounds to add to the ambience.

climbing here is an organized 'league' sport not a personal lifestyle, so there were about 100 climbers competing in something. they had to aid climb a face, set up a tryrolean traverse out to a big tree, rap down and then do some other obscure things, racing the clock and the other teams. it was as bad as it sounds. light was fading so only did two routes before going back to camp.

easter sunday: got up early made tea, my mates had brought special ukrainian easter foods. luckily there was a smaller crag downstream free of the comp nonsense. fairly good rock, new bolts and not too many gumbies. considering this was my first full day on real rock in about 11 months, i managed not to hurt anything except my pride. my body starting remembering how to climb about the same time my body started remembering how long it had been since i climbed.

the weather was brilliant. climbed in shorts after most of a horrible winter bundled up in everything i owned and trudging thru the snow everyday. my mates has an 8 person tent and we cooked most things over the open fire.

monday: after a couple hours working the kinks out of my body, went back to the main crag, since the 'sport climbers' had finished their comp, did some other good routes. managed to get up a nice 6b (hardest climb here is a 7a and the crag is only about 15 m high) weather started coming in. climbed a crack without gear cause i don't have any and refused to clip the bolts next to it (think mari with bolts) and went back to camp for a nap.

got back to the city monday night and really enjoyed my hot soak in the bath. so I can consider the easter climbing weekend a success even tho i climbed like a geriatric sheila and it wasn't araps. going back to crimea next month for a week to see what i can see, maybe get in some multipitch.