Update

We recieved a short message from Siebe. Everything is ok with him, and soon a new blogspost will arrive!

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New experiences are coming!

Hellow everybody!

A lot of people know where I am right now but still for the ones that don't know. Yesterday morning at 8am my flight from Brussels towards Madrid left nice on time after I said goodby for the third time for a long while (4 months) to everybody at home. From Madrid I flew straight towards Venezuela, Caracas, where my trip is starting.

After my last trip in the US for seven months I've been in Belgium for about 5 months. Those 5 months where some months with lots of movement. After I had found a place to live I started working for Greenpeace Belgium. This was a really interesting job, I learned a lot of it. While working I tried to climb and train a lot for this expedition in Venezuela. In the mean time I also spent lots of time with my girlfriend what was really great. The last month at home I didn't work any more and I prepared for this trip.

The 5th of january I got some bad news. Jorn, my good friend and trainer for 6 years died of his brain tumor after he was sick for about 2 years. This is hard and I've a hard time putting words on this los of an amazing individual in my life! Jorn had a really special meaning in my life, he learned me everything just until who I am right now and even where I am. It's because of him I'm here and everything I'll do and I'll climb the rest of my life is with Jorn. With this blogpost I will start a new way of travelling and climbing for myself and especially for Jorn.

About this trip:

This trip is starting where I am right now, Venezuela! This evening 3 friends of mine are arriving here in Caracas. Those friends are going to be my climbing team for the next month: Mason Kinloch Earl (USA), Sam Farnsworth (UK) and George Ullrich (UK). Our expedition is bringing us towards the Tepuy mountains in Canaima. The Tepuy Mountains are known for the biggest waterfall in the world who is storming down one big Tepuy of 1000 meters high, Salto del Angel. A Tepuy mountain is a sandstone mountain with a flat top, also called Table Mountain. The only natural way up this kind of mountains is climbing steep vertical or even overhanging Big Walls.

So now you know what I'm doing in this country. Our expedition is going towards a Tepuy of 600 meters. The special thing about this wall is that it isn't vertical, it's overhanging! (Overhanging 35 degrees like we heard, not sure.) Another big challange is the jungle, we have to walk some days through the jungle to get to the base of the wall. Once we're there the climbing can begin and we're planing to open a new line in this 600 meter overhanging wall! I'm not going to say more then this about this project.

After this expedition I'll go south towards Buenos Aires, Argentina. From there I'll go to Tuzgle and Bariloche. Maybe more areas but that part of the trip is still unclear. One thing I know, it's going to be amazing! I return the 25th of may, not as long as my past trip but still long enough.

Now I'm in the hotel waiting for my friends. It's really hot here, I think it might be almost 30 degrees Celcius. I went outside just for about 20 minutes and I think I'm already burned a little!

The people are amazing here, everybody is really friendly. People start talking to each other really fast and I feel good around most of them. Just arriving in Caracas was a little scary but not as bad as I expected. If you think about what you're saying and doing there is not much that can happen. The best thing I did to prepare for this trip is following Spanish class at CLT Leuven the last five months. I love speaking Spanish! (the little Spanish I know.)

I'm so psyched for this expedition and I will keep you up to date when I can! In the jungle we don't have internet so a next blogpost shall be in a month or a little longer I think. Maybe I can write something in two days in Ciudad Bolivar. I'm exited to go and get my friends at the airport this evening.

This following small text is for Jorn!

"In 2004 verscheen er plotseling een man in de klimzaal.

“Siebe, stop eens met snoepen en eet minstens 5 stukken fruit per dag en drink 2 liter water.” Dat was de stem van Jorn.

Ik was 13 jaar niet altijd gehoorzaam maar volgde zonder twijfel jouw goede raad op.

Sinds die dag kwam jij in mijn leven en zal nooit meer verdwijnen.

Jorn, je hebt in jouw leven een weg afgelegd waarvan velen in mijn omgeving niets weten. Maar wat iedereen wel weet, is dat deze weg heeft gezorgd voor een prachtig mens.

Jorn , je was geïnteresseerd en nieuwsgierig. Je stapte de klimwereld binnen en werkte je onmiddellijk op naar een waardevolle trainer en vriend van velen. Je had een doel voor ogen en nam dit uiterst serieus. Je trainde mij en vele anderen, las enorm veel trainingsboeken, reed duizenden kilometers door het land en verder voor specifieke trainingen en competities. Kortom, je gaf je volledig voor anderen, je gaf en gaf nog veel meer.

Jorn, ik kon voor alles bij jou terecht.

Je begeleide me in het klimmen, in het trainen, in het leren accepteren, in het studeren, in het omgaan met verdriet en tegenslag , in het omgaan met pijn en ongeluk en in het lliefhebben en omgaan met mensen. De boodschap die je me steeds gaf was dromen en doorzetten om deze dromen te bereiken.

Jorn je leerde me gedurende 7 belangrijke jaren in mijn leven alles tot wie ik nu ben. Van al die kracht en energie die jij had, gaf jij zoveel aan mij door. Jij gaf me kracht, ervaringen, energie en hopen geluk.

Jorn, ik wil je bedanken voor alles wat je voor me betekende. Om je te bedanken zal ik alles wat je me leerde verder zetten en alles wat ik doe zal ik doen met jouw waarden en jouw inzet.

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New Climbing Blog layout!

On my last trip in the US my blog had a lot of views from all over the world so I decided to write everything in English. You can also notice an amazing change in this blog and the layout of it. My blog coordinator Herman Desmet made it more practical with more options but still as easy as the last version of the blog.
New things are the map where you can find all the places I’ve been, my realizations for people who are interested, the most popular post and some media. To have a better overview of the news, the home page shows only the first couple of sentences of the post. To read more you can click on the post.

I want to thank Herman Desmet for his nice work! Now my blog is ready for the next project!

Enjoy!

Siebe Vanhee

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Finding a way!

What to do when you’re a motivated climber in Belgium? I’m still searching for the solution, but I’m close.

Now I’m about three months and a half back in Belgium and this blog post will be more optimistic as the last one! I’m living in a little house with another climber near Leuven. I’m working for Greenpeace and doing some route setting in climbing gyms to earn some money for my next project, I’ll need it!
In the mean while I’m training a little in gym and climbing as much as I can outside; Freyr, Ettringen and Pfalz. To train more specifically for my next project I go running a little and try to go to trad-climbing areas.

Last week I’ve been three days in Freyr (Belgium’s famous vertical sport climbing crag) and three days in the Pfalz (Trad climbing in Germany).
Freyr is some good grey limestone sport climbing. But still I couldn’t leave my cams home! I heard that Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll and Mich Zaman climbed ’13 Boulevard du Vol’, 8a on cams so I had to give it a try to! Togheter with Klaas Willems I went to Freyr with a bigger backpack as usual. It didn’t took me to much try’s, after one try searching for the good cam placements in this quite solid limestone I did the only 8a traditional route in Freyr. Funky! "2 bovenste foto's: Bram Lambrechts"

After that good start of a little week trip, Klaas and I left towards the Pfalz, Germany. The Pfalz is a big climbing area with lots of little crags apart from each other. The sandstone towers or walls are mostly about 40 – 50 meters high. There is a lot of trad-climbing but also some sport. The trad-climbing there is not so hard but really beautiful. If you’ve never climbed trad on sandstone, this is a really nice place to learn it! The atmosphere of the fall with the beautiful trees and the red – brownish sandstone is amazing. After three days of climbing there the humidity was pretty high so we decided to go back towards Freyr!

Our fifth day climbing in a row happened on the small edges in Freyr! Again a beautiful fall day showed us some nice and peaceful nature! Even at the end of November the main wall can be to hot in the sun. But still I decided to try an old project back again: ‘Schwarzenegger’, the classic 8a in Freyr. I was really surprised when I did it first try of the day while hanging the quickdraws. Hanging those quickdraws is no problem compared to searching a while where to place witch size of cam!

Schwarzenegger: "Foto Werner Van Steen - Alpitec/Petzl Benelux"

That same day we returned back home where I rested a day and went running. The next day I returned again towards Freyr to do some more vertical edgy sport climbing. This time I brought my girlfriend with me who started to climb one month ago! Nice! Because of the nice Sunday a lot of Belgium climbers were hanging around on this amazing limestone wall. So the good atmosphere was already there. It was a misty and a little bit humid day in Freyr but we couldn’t complain much.
Again I did some good performances, really unexpected. I climbed ‘Banegger’, 8a on sight, although the first part of it because the second part I already climbed with Schwarzenegger. This was really amazing, I love the technical art of Freyr! When I came down from Banegger I looked at ‘Bayou Minou’, 8a+, the same start as Banegger but another end. When I came down I rested a little and did it first go! I was so surprised, I’m sure it was the good atmosphere and vibes of a nice November Sunday in Freyr.

So this is my way of combining climbing and real life for the moment! It works pretty well!
The 24th of January I’m leaving for an amazing project far away again! I’m still not going to say what it will be!

Keep on rocking and find a way!

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Reality

Almost two weeks back in Belgium! I felt lost in reality, back in this materialistic world. I had a hard time adjusting to this way of living here, harder then when I arrived in the States. I could only see negative things about the life back here. Soon I realized that this was according to the good life I had in the US. One of the biggest reasons why I had such a hard time coming back is because of the lack of structure in my life right now. I arrived back in Belgium without goal, without future plans but with experience! After two weeks of adjusting (seeing friends) and planning the future I found kind of a plan.

So right now I will start working and following evening school Spanish for about 5 months and then I’ll go on a trip again. I don’t know where yet but it will be some Big Wall climbing.

I did not feel ready to study yet. I feel that I need to take my time to find a subject in my life besides climbing where I’m really interested in. If I was going to study right now, I know it would be just because of the society who’s pushing it to follow the regular pattern. I will study, but only when I feel motivated and when I found an interesting subject.

In those next few months I will be working and still climbing! My condition is amazing right now and I don’t want to lose it. I’ll make a couple of trips to Peak District (England), Etringen (Germany) and more. And of course I will be hanging in the Belgian local crack Freyr to do some hard face sportclimbing!

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From 3400 meters back to 0!

Written on the 19th of august:

I still know the moment I was arriving in the United States once. Time goes and doesn’t stop.
One week ago I was hanging at 3400 meters high on a mountain in The Bugaboos, Northern BC in Canada. Right now I’m sitting between all kind of different people in gate C3 in Washington Dulles waiting for the plane that is going to bring me back to Belgium!

My perfect road trip through the US has come to an end. But for me, a new perspective on the world we live in has just started. New plans and goals are coming, self-consciousness and self- knowledge I won. This trip was an impressive experience and unforgettable. I highly recommend young climbers this kind of experience you can find in different kind of ways. For me the main factor is travelling on your own and experiencing everything by yourself, bad and good things. For me the bad things in those seven months turned always out in good things. Is it luck? … Karma? … Coincidence? Or is it just always like that? Who knows!

The Bugaboos

Written on the 22th of august in Nieuwrode, nearby Leuven, nearby Brussels in Belgium in Europe:

The last week of my trip I went towards the Bugaboos with Mike Martinson. The Bugaboos is a world class Alpine climbing area. The weather is not all the time very good but me and Mike where kind of lucky! The base camp (Appelbee campsite) is a 4 hour hike steep uphill. Most of the climbers camp on this flat rock area although climbers have also the option to overnight in the Kain Hut where you need to pay 25 dollars a night.
We’ve spent 4 climbing days in the Bugaboos. The first day was an easy day when we did ‘Mec Tec Arrête’. When we arrived on top of this 6 pitch classic a thunderstorm came in and threw tons of big balls of hail on our heads. We raped down and ran to camp where we saw our tent (only outside tarp) full of hail on the inside. No climbing for that day anymore.

The next day we climbed the ultra classic ‘Sunshine Crack’ on the Snowpatch. This is really an amazing climb and we were lucky because there was nobody in front of us. I linked the upper two pitches, who are really amazing! The second last pitch is the real Sunshine Crack, it’s a #3 to #4 BD Camelot size. I climbed the pitch with only two #3 and one #4 and I never bumped a piece up with me. So … run outs in da house!


Our third day we decided to go and climb over the Snowpatch col to see some more spires in the Bugaboos. We past the Pigeon spire, saw the backside of the Howser towers, the Minaret and the Pigeon Feathers. We walked for about 3 hours through the snow when we arrived at the Feathers where we did ‘Fingerberry Jam’, 5.12-. It’s a short climb of 6 pitches on the Fingerberry jam tower at the Feathers. This is one of the best climbs of my trip! The first two pitches are 5.11 where you follow flaky cracks on a face and stemming moves in a stem box! The third crack is the 5.12- where you follow it to the point the crack gets to narrow to climb. Then you make a hard face traverse to the left to another crack you follow to the top of that pitch. I fell in the traverse and figured out the moves after a couple of tries. Suddenly a realized that I probably was traversing to high when I saw an easier way 3 meters lower. The traverse I was trying was probably a little harder cause of its sideways dyno to the other crack!

After the 4th pitch, 5.10 beautiful corner, we decided to go down and rap the route because of the last two pitches that didn’t look as good, they looked really chossy. We rapped down also for another reason, apparently the rap of the top was hard to find and you need to leave lots of gear. That’s what we heard from another party on there before.
Use a double rope to rap off the route itself and take maybe some extra webbing. The anchors are some fixed gear. We left a shitty carabineer and a piece of webbing.

Left picture: Me and the Sunshine crack in the back!

Because our next goal was the ‘Becky Chouinard’ on the South Howser Tower we left our gear that evening for the next day at East Basin camp. Then we walked all the way back towards Appelbee campside. At 10:30pm we went to bed and we woke up the next day at 4:30am to do the hike a third time towards the South Howser Tower. At 9am we arrived at the base of the Becky Chouinard, we were already exhausted after three climbing days and all the hiking. A big long route of 20 pitches was still waiting on us. The first 3 pitches we simul (how do you write this word?) climbed. The pitches are very easy so everything goes pretty fast. The climbing of the whole route is nice but the reason why the route is so popular is because it’s a nice and exposed easy climb and it goes all the way to the top of the South Howser. We arrived at the top when it was getting dark. We found the rap station on time to do the 11 raps to go off the Tower. Those we did in the dark with a nice amount of moonlight of the full moon, beautiful! We arrived back at camp at 1am! This was a hard 4th day in a row, that’s the reason we decided not to climb the next day! We made the decision to pack all our stuff up and go for the hike down towards the car. We left the Bugaboos completely wrecked on Sunday and did the drive back to Squamish on two days. This was the last bit of climbing of my seven months trip and it was amazing!!!

This Bugaboos trip was the first time I did some alpine climbing and I really like it! The long snowy approaches are hard in the beginning when you’re not used to them. It was the first time I walked like that through the snow and over cols with ice axes and crampons! New experience and en amazing time! I’ll definitely do this again!

When we arrived back in Squamish I cleaned up my car and left the next day towards Seattle. There I could stay with Hannah who I met in Indian Creek! Thanks for that Hannah!
In those last 3 days in Seattle I sold the Van. I had some stress at the end because of the buyer who hesitated at the last second to buy the car or not. I gave her a day of thinking and then she decided to buy the Van! I was pretty happy with her decision! Otherwise I was definitely going back to the states in a couple of months! Not a bad thing!

Now I’m in Belgium with a nice jetlag and a head full of questions and thoughts about what next in live! This is the first time I’m really without a plan. I’m pretty excited to find a way to do some kind of small study to do in combination with some work here in Belgium. New climbing trips are also flying around in my head but that I still keep for myself!


Moonlight over the Appelbee camping with under the moon a lightning storm on the other side of the mountains!



Me in the hail-storm walking back to camp

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Am I really Cobrasexual?

Only 12 days left! It’s really not long anymore! I’m pretty sad to think about it but it is the truth! The plan was to go to the Bugaboos but Mike and I are hesitating about it. Finally the weather here in Squamish is stable, nice and sunny. Compared to the weather in the Bugaboos where it is really snowy and rainy. Mike and I are also both psyched on Squamish for the moment so we are not feeling like leaving for the moment.

Last couple of days I did some random climbing. I tried El ChupaCobra again one day with Mason and yesterday with Alex Honnold. Both really inspiring climbing partners! Mason had again a really good try up to the last move where he fell, he is getting really close and I’m excited for him sending The Cobra! He took two rest days and is going up today to give it the final try! I’m excited for him!

Yesterday I warmed up in ‘Warriors of the Wasteland’ with the Petzl mini-traction. This time I tried to climb as fast as possible! I did the 5 long pitches in 40 minutes! This is a really good training. In the afternoon I did the 45 minutes hike to the Cobra again, this time with Alex who hasn’t tried the line in a year. I gave it a really good top rope burn with only 3 hangs! So exciting.
After that Alex gave it a lead burn with me yelling beta at him. His reason of starting to lead was to maybe send it and bitch about it to Mason! The good old competitive friends! He didn’t send it as expected because he hasn’t tried it for a year! After that I gave it another burn and this time on lead! It went pretty well but in the first crux I fell and ended up with a huge flapper on my pointer finger. Fuck! I hate my skin and it has been a problem for so long already! The Cobra Crack you only can try once or twice a day because it’s so pain full for the joints of your fingers as well as the skin! After every day trying this project my fingers are swollen as hell and I need a day off to recover just those joints!

I have been hanging out with Dean Potter as well. Really interesting personality! Dean also gave the cobra a try but he thinks of giving it some more time before fully trying it. Now I compared my hands with Dean’s and Alex’s and it turned out I really have big fingers and hands! Fuck! The cobra is really finger size dependent and is a real struggle with bigger fingers. But yeah, no worries just a little more challenging! I discovered in this line how strong my middle finger is. I take the mono with just the first knuckle in and I’m able to completely pull on it! So exciting! Yesterday I could link all those crux moves really good!

Now I have to wait until my skin heals! Fuck!

I’ll probably go bouldering a little to get some strength back, because I lost a lot of pure power!

Here some pictures of Horn Lake to give an example of the climbing.

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