Ticino, Switzerland, January 2003.

Catch train with Martijn from Zürich to Ticino (2-3 hours) ... meet Toby and Andy at the train-station and they drive us off to the climbing area (5-10 min). Toby and Andy have been bandit camping in the area for about three days. They smell bad, look feral and have been eating nothing but something they call "dingli".

The "secret" bouldering area is crawling with people ... there are literally dozens of beanie boppers wandering around the wreckage of an ancient glacial moraine. I'm guessing that this place is not much of a secret anymore. The weather isn't too bad, a bit cool but the rain is holding off. The mountains on either side of the valley are snow-capped and look very nice.

Actually, if it wasn't for the mountains this place would look exactly like Connecticut in the fall ... stoney broken ground, the rock looks very similar to CT traprock. The boys get to work fairly quickly, they have a few projects they want to work on. I do very little climbing myself and concentrate on just taking pics.

Things of note: Martijn tore up one of his hands real good, Andy never ran out of steam and Toby is completely insane.

Very very cool day, even if it did start to rain a tiny bit at the end (fortunately we had an umbrella to keep the top holds dry).