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The iceclimbing meetup

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The iceclimbing meetup in The Hague, climbing a huge icewall with icepixs and "iron" shoes :-)

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The iceclimbing meetup

March 21, 2009

The globe, with the iceclimbingwall

I cought the train and travelled to The Hague Central station. I had only three minutes left for the next train to The Hague Holland Spoor train station. I bought a train ticket and jumped into the train as I heard the wissel for departure. I made it on time and I was about 13.45 at the train station nearby the Globe where I would meet the other TB buddy's and where we would climb an ice wall. As it was my first time climbing rocks frozen or non frozen ever I had more the idea of icegliding instead of iceclimbing :D. After walking around the Globe I soon met Maike and Marthijn, the organisers of this meetup. But also Mark, Edwin, Bas, Femke, Jenny, Lieke, Thomas, Harish, Rina and one Couche Surfer girl, Sorry I forgot your name...

First we had to fill our names on a list, the instructions were translated by Maike. The gear we were getting of the climbingcentre which consists of a icewall a normal climbing wall and several shops.

The first volunteers :-)

The climbing hall is centered in a shop too and is called De Bever Zwerfsport. Before of after climbing you can take som coffee, tea or hot chocolate. It was much fun to see the first four travbuddy's climb the massive icy wall. We were taking pictures but it really was freezing out there. Even with our normal wintercoats we were frozen after 10 minutes and forced to go out and warm us to one of the hot drinks. The instructor was really used or sick of the cold as he were nothing else than his tshirt :-) Of the climbing center you got thin jackets but suprisingly enough they were really warm enough as they were wind and ice thight. And of course you will get warm enough of the climbing actions. After 45 minutes of climbing the second group had to take a climb. Well I was in the second group. Although I made a lot of icegliding jokes I had a try. It was very nice to do and came higher than the expected 20 cm :-) It's the easiest if you climbing from the legs.

Putting on the crams

If the ice axes are steady enough into the ice, just step a bit higher and let your legs do your work. The third group had a try too and also a fourth group was formed to climb until closing time of the shop. Some of the travbuddy's seemed to have natural talents and rushed to the top of the icy climbing wall. A couple of times the ice axes stayed at the top of the ice wall, of course the TB-ers thought of the instructor, as he had a good excuse to climb up so he had also a lot of fun. :-)

After being well dressed again we had a short tourist walk around The Hague. We walked to the most expensive and a lot of people think the ugliest building in The Hague and the smallest area of a sort of red light district. After admiring a church we walked further into the shopping district to the "Grote Markt" . This was the location of the restaurant "De Boterwaag". We had a very nice dinner, first drinks and nice fresh bread with nice kind of stuff, if you would like a soup which was a curry soup or another starter, a main course with beef, chicken or fish and of course a lot of nice desserts like chocolate cake, belgium waffles with icecream, meringue, home made apple pie and so on.