Climbing in Madagascar

Expedition in 2007

 

 

We are just back from Madagacar, so here are the first „facts":
From the 03. August until the 08. September 2007 we have been in the Tsaranoro-Valley in the middle of Madagascar. „We" have been a gang of four:

 

 

 

 1. Toni Lamprecht, Munich (Germany)
Is climbing since 23 years; a lot of first ascents and repeats up to
9a all around the world
2. Felix Frieder, Mindelheim (Germany)climbing since 15 years all disciplines from sport to alpine (up to
8b)
3. Sandra Wielebnowski Salzburg (Austria)
   Ice- and rockclimbing since 15 years, alpine routes to 7c and
sport routes to 8a 
4. Benno Wagner, Munich (Germany)
   the youngster with allround-skills doing alpine routes up to 7c+
and sport routes to 8a+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides repeating a bunch of routes, we managed to do an ingredible beautifull first
ascent, which has beaten all our expectations:
„Manara-Potsiny", 8a, 600m, 17 pitches on the eastface of Tsaranoro Be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After spending 9 days drilling the bolts (between the 09.08. and 19.08.) we
redpointed all the single pitches in a 3 days-effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After 2 restdays Toni, Benno und Felix climbed the whole route in a single-day (11
hours), while Toni succeeded to do all pitches without a single fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The route is a „Nonplusultra" concerning the facts of „beauty" and "quality" in the
Tsaranoro-Valley. In the total length of 600 meter we met only 6 meter of „not-
perfect-quality-rock". The rest was ironlike granite, made for climbing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the character of the route: In the lower part (400m) the climber has to sneak
through technically climbing in the french 7th grade, affording a lot of skin.
In the 13th pitch follows the crux with 30m long, slightly overhanging climbing on
small edges. This ingredible pitch starts with a boulder-problem, athletic moves in the
middle part and a fingery part at the end. And the rest of the route? 200m of
beautifull, exposed and various climbing on beautifull rock, leading to the end of a
pillar, from where you can go in another 100m easier climbing to the top (the whole
route would be 700m than)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Equipped with 160 bolts and „Abseil"-Belays the route is a strong contender to be a
extrem-classic in the Tsaranoro-Valley one day… .
The 1 day ascent was documented on video, so stay tuned for more infos… .

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