During our stay in Tbilisi, we went to an old Russian monument on which the Georgian climbing community had bolted some crazy routes.
The climbing and scenery were just crazy and very unique. Some handles and steps on the routes were similar to the ones from indoor climbing gyms. Some were wooden and old and some were just tiny pieces of rocks glued to the wall.
The whole monument was about 40 meters high and there were even two Multipitch routes.
After Racki and I went there alone, Adela and Alvaro joined us. And at the famous overlander park spot near the Trinity Cathedral we got to know new friends from France: Roxane and Vincent. They were super nice and together we had a great time climbing and at the parking.
We went back to Katskhi for some more climbing and it was awesome as always! We met Lasha, a Georgian Climber, climbed together and shared our meals. Cindy and I did a small hike in that area and visited the small chapel on the stone pillar.
And this time our visit of Katskhi was very special because we met our lovely friends Adela and Alvaro for the first time. At a rainy day, Cindy knocked at the door of tha van and from there on we did a lot of climbing together, played a lot of Exploding Kittens and had so much fun. Spending time with them was just hilarious!
After Katskhi, Racki and I went again to Sveri for some climbing. Adela and Alvaro joined us and together we enjoyed the Via Ferrata with the magnificent swing. It was my third time, but it was again awesome!
We went to another climbing area. There were not so many routes and the rock was often not very stable so I won’t share a link or something.
We found a super nice camp spot and had a funny sheep with one black ear visiting us with her friends.
At the end of our first day there, we left some of our quickdraws on one of the routes and the next day two of them were gone. I was so pissed. We asked the construction workers who were working close to the route but they did not know anything. Still I was pissed. I mean these quickdraws were more than four meters in the route so you have to really put in some effort to get them.
In that area we did a crazy difficult route. The beginning was so hard. It took us more than an hour to get up the first three meters. When I was close to the anchor (top) of that route I was pretty tired and it got very difficult for me.
At one point I had a pretty good position and wanted to clip in my rope into the next quickdraw. I stretched myself up to reach the quickdraw with my rope because I was craving for some rest after clipping. Doing so was of course not the best idea because pre-clipping like that adds a long distance to the distance I would fall. At first my position felt stable enough but with more stretching it felt less stable and when I needed just half centimeter more, I lifted my right foot just a bit more and suddenly lost all the friction and started falling.
I was not shocked about it but after a split second of falling I realized that the rope started wrapping around my right pointing finger. I felt the heat of the friction of the rope running around my finger and intuitively I tried to shake it off my finger. It just worked before the rope started to tense up and I was super happy. And I was still falling and falling and started to see the quickdraws racing by in front of me. It felt like watching railway sleepers passing by when watching down on the rail between two train cars. And from somewhere the sound of these racing pods from Star Wars Episode One came into my head. After about four meters the rope started to break my Fall, tensed up and I was sitting in the rope. All good. Happy. A bit of blood on my finger.
