Year 2015 was the best climbing year I had so far. I spent most of the time outside on the rocks climbing amazing lines and meeting wonderful people. This year I managed to send my hardest routs in different segments of this beautiful sport. I did my hardest redpoints and onsights either in sport climbing, multipitch climbing and also trad climbing. Here are some highlights of this year.
Sport climbing
Year 2015 started in the best possible way. We spent first part of january in one of my favourite sport climbing areas „El Chorro“. On january the 2nd, my first climbing day of 2015 I redpointed my project from last year – Lourdes (8a). This made me really happy, because I tried it so many times in previous year. This year I sent it on my 2nd go.
I like the style of climbing in El Chorro and since I was in good shape I was able to redpoint some other hard routes like Pepe el boludo (8a), Rima Libre (7c+/8a) and others. I also onsighted the route La puta valla (7c) according to guidebook, but it is probably easier.
My performance in El Chorro motivated me to train hard. After returning home, I trained around two months in the gym and it payed off. I was quiet strong in the spring. I did my hardest onsight Dolga Kava (7c) in Mišja Peč, Slovenia. At the beginnig of climbing season in my local crag I sent my hardest route Džonova Cesta (8a+). For the rest of the season I was more focused on multipitch and trad climbing.
Multipitch climbing
I really like to climb big walls. If this big walls are bolted and rock is beautiful, than it is the best opportunity to push my limits. One of my favourite big walls is wall of Aniča Kuk in Paklenica, Croatia. This year I made a great effort to freeclimb some of the harder routes in this wall. Here is the list of my ascents. I freeclimbed all of the pitches in lead, either onsight or redpoint.
Brid Klina 7c RP (4a, 4c, 7b, 6c+, 6b, 5c, 6b+, 7c, 7b+, 4c) – My hardest multipitch so far, all pitches on lead.
Rumeni Strah 7c (6b+, 6b, 6a+, 7a, 7c, 6a, 6a, 4b, 4b, 5b) RP, all pitches on lead.
Gaz (7b) OS (6b+, 7a, 6c, 6b, 6b+, 5c, 6b+, 5a, 5c, 7b, 6a+), all pitches on lead.
Zenit (7b) OS (5a, 5c, 6c, 6b, 6c+, 6c+, 5c, 7a, 7b, 6c, 6c, 6c), all pitches on lead.
Trad climbing
We planned a trip to Yosemite in autumn. That meant we had to do some crack climbing before. We visited one really good area Cadarese in Italy, where we practiced trad on granite cracks. The rock was not like in Yosemite, but still good enough for practice.
In mid september we finaly arrived to Yosemite. To one of the most beautiful valleys in the world. Here we spent around one and half month and climbed many wonderful lines. We were still not good enough for freeclimbing hard routes on El Capitan, but we at least tried. I lead my first multipitch trad routes and managed to climb some Yosemite classics. My best achievement was freeclimbing the West Face (5.11c) on El Capitan and sending amazing Yosemite classic cracks Crimson Cringe (5.12b) and Fish Crack (5.12b).
We also tried to freeclimb Freerider (I was only seconding), but this time it was too hard for us. We will definitely come back to try it again. It was our first bigwall and it was really good experience. Next time we will be much smarter and hopefully stronger, too.
At the end of the trip I started to feel more comfortable in cracks and with trad gear bellow me.
In general this year was really good and motivated me to train and climb even harder. Since we came back from Yosemite I am so motivated that I train almost every day. I hope that year 2016, will be at least as good as 2015, if not even better.
List of my ascents in 2015
Miška Izakovičová 