Sky hooks and tufas – Vang Vieng, Laos

I have left my mark on South East Asia. A short walk over the river from Vang Vieng, Laos, through paddy fields and across rickety wooden bridges that shudder under people’s weight, is Pha Daeng mountain. Near to a set of aesthetic, stalactite strewn caves is a cliff face that bears the fruits of three days labour. Together with another member of the Hot Rock team, Danny, I bolted my first new routes on this cliff face. We have established an entire wall of new climbs, with five routes in total leading up orange conglomerate rock to some interesting tufa features (tufas are bumpy limestone features that form when the carbonate in rock dissolves in water and drips down the rock, reforming rather like staligtites, but on the face of the cliff) that make for challenging climbing before bigger holds appear nearer to the top.

Danny places the first few bolts on the hardest route on the wall

It was the first time I have bolted. It is both an exhilarating and frightening process. Imagine hanging from a rope, 10 to 20 metres above the ground, suspended only by a metal hook desperately placed behind a tiny flake of rock and a sling, flung around the top of a tufa. Using this set up Danny bolted the first line, a long 25 metre route down a corner between the flat overhanging face of the wall and a large tufa that descends the entire right hand side of the wall and projects more than 3 metres outwards.  It is fun but funky climbing.

Then it was my turn. I climbed up to where Danny had placed his anchor points at the top of his climb and set up my rope to abseil down. A few metres down, with Danny pulling hard on the bottom the rope, I swung five metres to the left to where a large hanging tufa met the wall. Frantically I grabbed for holds, trying to stick to the rock before I swung away again. Eventually I managed to throw a sky hook – basically a small piece of metal that hooks into features in the rock – into a pocket.

Me, straddling the tufa attached to the wall by a sky hook

Stupidly, in my inexperience, I had forgotten to actually attach the sky hook to my harness and so was instead left hanging in mid-air, clinging to the sky hook with my right arm, unwilling to let go now I had got an attachment to the rock. With a great deal of pulling and unattractive grunting, I managed to drag myself close enough to clip in with my harness, ready for the fun to begin.
Drills are not light pieces of equipment, especially when they have to be powerful enough to drill several inches into hard limestone. Add to that several stainless steel bolts, hangers, brushes, a hammer and a spanner and that is a fair weight to haul up on a rope while all the time expecting the sky hook to blow from the rock at any moment.
Let me talk you through bolting. First the hole has to be drilled. Keeping enough pressure on the drill for the hammer mechanism to work and ensuring it stays straight while dangling from a swaying rope is not easy. When the hole is deep enough, it needs to be cleaned. We use a length of tubing which fits inside the hole, allowing us to blow out the dust inside. If this is not done, the lifespan of the bolt is dramatically reduced as it increases its vulnerability to corrosion.

Danny Mickers bolting on Hangover wall

Then the metal bolt itself, with hanger and nut attached, must be hammered into the hole in the rock until the hanger is flush with the wall. We were using expansion bolts, so the nut is then tightened, which pulls the bolt forward in the hole, causing a soft metal sheath around it to slide back over a wider part of the bolt and so jam securely in the hole. The bolt is then ready to be clipped.
I repeated this process eight times down the wall, each time having to swing in and attach myself due to the overhang. When it was complete, we had a new climb. All that was left was to climb it.
The first ascent was a struggle for me, but the route started up the right hand side of a small tufa to some beautiful pockets before the crux. The key to the hardest section of the climb was to pinch an awkward tufa while using an under cling until pockets between two tufas could be reached. From here, it was a case of getting my feet high, pinching the top of the tufa and pushing up for the huge holds at the top. It was probably a 6b+ or 6C.

Over the next three days, Danny and I bolted another three routes – all hard and overhanging. My favourite was a 6b route that followed a shallow groove up the rock to some sharp conglomerate rock and a large tufa above that was full of holds. An interesting move near the top forces the climber to swing round, or barn door as it is known, from the groove into a large jug like hold to get the second last clip before pulling up on the tufa on the left to the top. This route, however, also left me with some injuries – while bolting, I had to clean off a large dead vine that hung down the groove. Unfortunately this appeared to be home to some flying ants and other biting insects that took umbrage at their home being destroyed. By the evening my hands and arms were swollen with bites.

Bolting my first climb

We have opted to call the place Hangover Wall.  “It’s funny ‘cos it is over-hanging, ja?”  It is actually named in honour of a movie we have been watching rather than the state we were in when we bolted it.  However, being sited so close to the party capital of Laos, Vang Vieng, it is perhaps appropriate. Definitely worth a visit after several free shots of Lao Lao…

Danny climbing on Hangover Wall

Sadly we have now moved to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, to sort out some visas before we head to the next climbing destination and then into Cambodia. We had hoped to leave today, but the truck is undergoing some major surgery and so will be stuck here for another day. Fortunately there is apparently plenty more routes to bolt at the new area we are going to, so in the meantime I will nurse the cuts, bites and grazes to ready myself for the next bolting adventure.

Laos – Thunderstorms and Kalashnikovs

We are now in the least developed country in the world – Laos. I should apologise for the apparent silence and then sudden burst of blogging activity. China, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that my blog is in some way subversive and counter-revolutionary and so blocked all access to it.

Now, I am in a more relaxed country, hopefully the blogs should flow easier, internet connections allowing.

The contrast between Laos and China is stark. Almost as soon as we crossed the border the roads deteriorated into pot-holed, dust lined tracks. It was slow going in the truck, as the roads wound around the countryside, through small villages of wooden houses built on stilts with woven reeds for walls and roofing material. Outside the buildings mats covered in corn and chillies dried in the sun. The people looked bewildered as the heavy, rattling bulk of Birt shuddered along their roads through their villages, but they gave friendly waves as we passed. Loas is far friendlier and more relaxed than China. The landscape seemed to change almost instantly, as if the Chinese had bent their environment to their iron will, while the Lao seemed happy to meander up and down the jungle covered mountainsides. The air also suddenly cleared on the Laos side of the border, the smog and haze that obscured the horizon in China lifted to give clear vistas of the mountains and blue sky above them. The contrast across the border could not be greater, but already I like the Laos better. It seems more relaxed and friendlier. The weather too is different – more humid, stickier and every night we are treated to impressive thunder storms that accompany the downpours of rain.

The Mekong from Luang Prabang

We arrived in Luang Perbang after nearly 8 hours of driving on the poorly constructed roads, passing through the occasional village, rich with the smell of wood smoke. In one the entire ground of a cemetery was covered in yellow of drying corn. As we got closer to the city, signs of development became more apparent – telephone wires, electricity pylons, satellite dishes outside the basic buildings. Breeze blocks and bricks also became a more common building material.

A novice monk in Luang Prebang

Luang Perbang itself is a tourist’s town, crawling with westerners gap year students looking to find themselves, French visitors and elderly Germans. The city, if you can call it that, is little bigger some of the towns in China we visited, contains around a dozen wats, the Buddhist temples and accommodation for Monks. We visited a couple of these and I met a young novice monk called Phet who spoke very good English. He had been training for three years already and had at least another three before he would qualify as a monk. Being a novice, however, had given him the opportunity to go to school and college, something that the families of most of the novices in the Wat were unable to afford normally, he said.

Barbequed street food is very popular in Laos. We have been living off the grilled chicken, pork chops and fish it is possible to buy at the stalls. There are also stalls selling fresh coffee – something I have been craving all through China – and freshly made fruit shakes.

Luang Prabang market

The truck has been running low on wood and charcoal so I managed to make a deal with one of the stalls to buy 4 huge bags of charcoal for 72,000 Kip, which is about £5.50. Unfortunately carrying it to the truck and loading it into the top locker at the back meant I became covered in the fine black dust. I drew some funny glances from the locals as I walked back to the hostel blacked up like a minstrel.

After a couple of days in Luang Perbang we then moved to a bush camp near one of the climbing areas. Unfortunately we were visited by some guys with Kalashnikov rifles during the night, along with a couple of police officers, who told us we had to leave as camping was not allowed. We argued for some time with them and in the end Graham had to agree to visit the police station the next morning to talk to their boss. During the night, however, the heavens opened and turned our already slightly muddy and humid camp into a swamp, complete with leaches. We were not sad to be told we had to pack up and leave when Graham returned. We are now, instead, stationed in a very nice little guesthouse about 2km outside of Vang Vieng.

The climbing here is good, but a lot more scattered than in China. The crags are smaller, but the rock is sound with overhanging tufas, conglomerate rock and awkward limestone pockets and cracks. In places, despite the relatively low traffic in Laos, it is already becoming polished. A couple of members of the group have already bolted one new route in the first area we visited, Na Pha Daeng. It is follows some interesting tufas up a steep over hanging wall, and is probably graded about 6b.

Sam and I are planning on bolting a couple of routes at a place called Pha Daeng Mountain at a crag called Lucy’s cave. Here the limestone falls in large, solid looking tufas that form a shallow cave behind them.

Mustard powering up 7a at Pha Daeng Mountain - Lucy's Cave

Out on the front, although it is in the sun in the morning, are some potential routes that we are hoping to put in place. We have another week here before moving on to the next area in Laos, so there is plenty of time to explore some more areas too.

A group of us have already had a rather messy day on the infamous river tubing in Viang Viene. This town is known as the party capital of Laos, and for good reason. Drunken westerners stagger about the streets for most of the day and night, and almost everyone takes part in the aquatic pub crawl that is tubing. Using giant inflatable rings, participants float down the river, stopping every 10 yards or so on either side of the river at the many bars there to have free shots of Lao Whisky (or Lao Lao) and to drink buckets of cocktails. Many of the bars have swings, mud pits, zip lines and jumps into the river that we monkeyed around on. At one bar, the staff were a bit surprised when all eight of us managed to clamber along a wire out to a bucket and return with a chip that earned us a free drink. It turned into a rather messy night in the end, and we floated back to the guesthouse in the dark as rain and thunder storms started to batter down. We managed to loose quite a few of the group along the way, but fortunately no-one was permanently lost and we found most of the strays drinking at various bars in town. The only real injuries were the hangovers the next morning and some bruised shins on my part after holding on for too long on a zip line… Ouch.

Moon Hill, Yangshuo, China

The walk to the iconic Moon Hill takes you up 1200 steps, dogged every step of the way by local women trying to flog cold water, beer and mango slices. No amount of saying “no!” puts them off. One woman followed us the entire way to the top, despite having watched us sneak in the side entrance over a wall to avoid having to pay the Y15 entrance fee. Every sweaty, stifling step was accompanied by the soundtrack of “Water?  Water?  Later! Later!” while she waved her fan at us in some attempt to make us cool. Sadly the place swarms with these insesant sellers, who seem unable to take no for an answer. It is a shame, as the hill itself is stunning. It forms a huge arch, studded with baubly stalectites.  It is here that some of the footage from the Doseage V video was shot.  An impressive 7a and 8a+ lumber up the stalectites, forcing climbers to throw shapes in all three dimensions to stay on the rock. The climbs to the right of the arch are easier, but still on an overhang that leaves the arms feeling pumped and the brain swimming with blood.  I led a nice 6b up the 30 degree overhanging wall, every move felt like a struggle.  A Canadian guy who led up the 6b+ to my left took a huge fall on Spencer’s rope from almost the top of the climb. Whooshing air signalled his body passing me, a good 6 metres below him.

The meat market, Yangshuo, China

Curiosity took Zed and myself into Yangshuo market one morning. The vegetable section is inoccusious enough – rows of spring onions, chillies, marrows and fruit are laid out on the floor and weighed using a traditional balance. Ringing the vegetable sellers in the dingy covered hall are stalls selling fish, freshwater crayfish, eels, frogs bound together in nets and snails. All are kept in small red washbasins on the floor. Large carp and other fish flap around and splash water on the feet of customers as they walk past. One man had a small cage with five small birds inside.
A dingy alleyway lined with more sellers leads to the meat section. The smell hits you before the sights, and it is overwhelmingly of dead flesh. It is a difficult, but distinctive stench – one of rotting chicken, blood and bacteria. As we entered, a man to our left was hacking at a dead duck with a large cleaver, spraying me with liquid from the carcass. Dead birds hung from many of the stalls, while further back live chickens and ducks were held in cages. A few stalls further down, the bodies of two and a half dead dogs hung from hooks. Their bodies were brown as if they had been smoked or slowly roasted, turning the flesh a deep, earthy brown. Their teeth were still bared in the morbid grin that they had greated death with. The dogs are apparently drowned as the adrenaline produced by such a grim death helps to tenderise the meat. Further into the market there were more stalls selling dog, one with a half carved carcasses laid out on the table, a woman asleep behind the counter.

Dog meat on sale in Yangshuo food market

It brings a new perspective of man sleeping side by side with his best friend. Behind her cages were filled with other dogs – all the same breed with golden brown coats. They seemed calm, but must surely have been aware of what had happened to their less fortunate kin.
Another woman and a man hunched over the body of a newly killed dog as they skinned it, crouching as they worked. Beside them large pots steamed. On the floor, large lumps of fat lay strewn across the passageways between the stalls. Liquid soaked into my flipflops and made me shudder when it squelched between my toes. It was a foul soup of flesh, tepid fat, blood, and juices from the raw meat that sat on the stalls.
In some parts of the market, locals haggled and bickered as they bought, while in others, sellers gathered together to play cards under umbrellas beside their stalls. At one end, women chopped and rolled out ingredients to make sweet cakes and dumplings. Most of the people there were friendly, if a little amused by our repulsed reactions in the meat market. Only one reacted badly when we tried to take photos of him, shooing us on.

Yangshuo, China

China is in a celebratory mood. For the past three weeks, the country has been building up to a week long national holiday either side of the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution. It has been an exciting time, but for our group it the celebrations have been somewhat stunted by illness.
We are here to explore the climbing and establish new routes in south China and south east Asia. Most of us met in Chengdu, in the Sichuan region of China – home of the famous mouth numbing peppers and hotpot – before making a 24 hour train journey to Yangshuo.
The hotpots, which are basically a boiling vat of oil and water into which meat and vegetables are dunked fondue style, are very tasty, but the longer the boil the spicier they get. All was well with our communal hotpot until some bright spark decided we should do shots of the seething broth of chilly. Red faces and choking were are reward.
We then sped down to Yangshuo on a 24 hour train journey on the hard sleeper – think four high prison bunk beds on a lurching carriage that stops every half hour to have another section added or removed with reverberating clangs and a has a cheery jingle to accompany announcements. The British railway system has so much to learn.
It is difficult to overestimate how much rock there is here. Towering limestone kastes pepper the landscape, rising up out of sunken paddy fields full of rice plants and flat dry farmland divided into small plots by raised mounds of earth.

Hot air balloons over the limestone towers of Yangshuo

The limestone is beautiful to look at, but even better to climb. Unlike many locations in the UK and around Europe, it is still be to polished by thousands of feet scuffing their way upwards. The rock is filled with interesting pockets, huge, friendly hand holds and sharp crimpy edges. So far only a few of the hundreds of limestone towers have had climbs put on them, and for the first week we tried to familiarise ourselves with the area and the routes. The grading here is stiff – a lot harder than many other places. It may be a cynical ploy to attract climbers to the area by presenting hard climbs with easier grades, but it is a fun place to be regardless.
A couple of members of our group have already established a new route in an area known as Chicken Cave, named after the nearby village rather than the presence of chickens in the cave that has been excavated into the rock by thousands of years of rain water. The route, which they have still to name, is tricky, with lots of hidden hand holds and awkward body positions.

Spencer tries the newly bolted project at Chicken Cave

Some others in the group have bolted some lines in new areas, climbing up scary loose rock using traditional climbing gear known as nuts, essentially lumps of metal that are crammed into a crack that the rope is then clipped to, and sky hooks, which are small curls of metal that are hooked into flakes of rock and pockets and then hung off. They have been cleaning the routes, removing all the debris and overgrown plants before drilling into the limestone to set bolts into the rock.
Myself and a couple of the others spotted a great looking crag in the centre of Yangshuo we were keen to bolt, but it appears the entire limestone cliff is owned by a group who have a shrine in the caves inside. Instead we have been looking at some cliffs near to our campsite on the outskirts of Yangshuo.
Camping in China is interesting. It is not a serene place. Even the smallest of dirt tracks sees a steady stream of noisy, dirty buses, trucks, motorbikes and glorified lawnmowers groaning their way along them. Our days usually start at around 6.30am when the first of the blaring vehicle horns start and it continues through the day.

Looking down from the back of Chicken Cave

Sadly we are now preparing to break camp and head further south towards Kunming for some new rock climbing areas and hopefully some new projects to bolt. The area there is less developed than Yangshuo and less well known, so there should be some good potential for finding a route of my own.

Bamboo rafts punt along the river Yu past our campsite. They have to cross over a concrete weir near to where our tents are pitched by hauling up onto the concrete, pulling them over on logs and tipping the into the water on the other side. The tourist and passengers who ride on the rafts get off while they are dragged out the water, leaving the to the mercy of the hawkers, postcard sellers and women who cook and sell little batter cakes along the weir. They then sit back in the raft before it is tipped back into the water, prompting little shrieks from the passengers as their feet and legs are submerged in the water.

Bamboo rafting in Yangshuo

It was to this scene, repeated over and over, we bathed each day. A narrow concrete channel at one end funnelled some of the water away from the main flow to create a hip deep bath of clean, clear-ish water, free from the scum of rubbish, plastic bags and algae that affected the rest of the river. How I longed for a shower and a simple hole in the floor.

China bound

I am on the cusp of starting a great adventure. In just a couple of days I’ll be arriving in China to join an unusual expedition. No cushy business trip or sight seeing tour for me. No, instead I will be clinging and clawing my way up some of the most iconic rock formations in south east Asia.
Along with a group of fellow rock climbers, we will be exploring what China and its neighbours have to offer. We will be looking for new ascents and exploring some of the nooks and crannies far from the typical tourist track.

Just like the economic and social changes that are transforming China day by day, a burgeoning rock climbing scene is also gradually beginning to emerge from behind the shadows that once made this country an enigmatic and secretive place for foreigners.
We will be there as respectful visitors, exploring some of the routes that have already been put up the towering limestone cliffs that spring for the valley floor in places such as Yangshuo in the Guangxi Province. In other places we will be establishing new routes, trailblazing new climbs up the aesthetic rock faces.

Our route through China will eventually lead us to the border with Laos. Here we expect to find a country still in its infancy as far as rock climbing is concerned. Still blighted by unexploded ordnance and landmines left over from the IndoChina wars, straying far from the beaten track is a dangerous proposition. Yet there are limestone cliff faces scattered all over this country, waiting to be climbed. Neighbouring Cambodia offers a similar proposition and even more opportunity for putting up some new routes and giving them a name. There is a strong tradition in the climbing world for giving routes weird and wonderful names. Usually there is a bizarre story behind it that reflects the antics or challenges that the climbers faced while trying to get up the route.

Who knows, maybe in years to come someone will be climbing one of the routes I have established and wonder what went on for me to call it what I did.

Font

I am delicately tapping this entry out around the almond sized blister on the tip of my index finger. Each squidgy press on my iPod, however, is testament to the fantastic week of bouldering I’ve just had in the sandy woods of Fontainebleau.
The forecast had been grim, with swimming looking a more likely prospect than any time on the rock, but fortunately the usual Gods of camping, who usually make sure it pisses buckets every time I even look at my tent were off enjoying a timely Kit-kat break.
This is my second trip to Font and the second time I’ve been blessed with rare, glorious sunshine. So an expected solitary day on the sculpted forest sandstone transformed in to six, crimpy, slopey and overhanging days of punishing my muscles and fingers.

Hello world!

This is my first post, on what I hope will be a long running chronicle of travels and adventures around South East Asia.