REVIEW OF SALEWA - Women's Wildfire GTX - Approach shoes

Hi Guys or Girls,

Sandra just wanted to give her personal review on her Salewa-Women's Wildfire GTX Approach shoes.

It is already the third pair of these approach shoes that she bought in the last 10 years.

Most important reason for her is the perfect balance between being a lightweight approach shoe and still sturdy enough for real demanding tracks and rock. With these GTX shoes you can count on their reliability in all weather conditions. They stay even dry when passing rainy grass areas. She is using the shoes in both warm and cold weather conditions without any problems just adapting her socks when required. So please size them correctly for winter socks. In summer, the shoes breath sufficiently to keep cool. The sole feels very secure on rocky surfaces when scrambling up to your climbing routes. The climbing zone on the toes even can give some additional support when climbing small passages.

Every 4 years of service and using them quite intense during every climbing weekend on rock approaches the shoes now are being used as mountain biking shoes where they get really worn out. Nevertheless, very good shoes.

San bought already here new pair of Wildfire GTX and continues to use them.

Thanks to Salewa for making these magnificent shoes.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKV27nPiEusYylUz-wP4Euw

Buy Salewa Wildfire GTX Approachshoes

Sandra with her first pair

 

Old Shoes

New Shoes

2 Small Running and Mountain biking in the Forest

Introducing our Trad Rack; Black Diamond, Camp, Wild Country, Trango.

Hi, we are Sandra and Jan a couple forming the 2 Small Adventurers. We love to be outdoors and do all kind of adventure activities.  One of our favorite activities is “trad” climbing. It started in the early 90’s when I switched from “speleology climbing” to sport climbing. I got fascinated by a trad climbing course which I did with Mark and Rowland Edwards in Spain and became immediately addicted. Both San and I we love to do crack routes from micro width to off width. We are by no means experts or pro’s but just two recreation climbers that want to have trad adventures next to our regular sport climbing adventures. Don’t get us wrong we still love to do sport climbing routes with bolted protection. Please check this blogsite per country where we climbed traditional routes if you want to see some pictures.

Germany: Ettringen and the Pfalz

Italy: Cadarese

France: Annot

Spain: Costa Blanca Area

Denmark: Bornholm

Sweden:  Bohuslän

So we have been climbing trad routes for quite some time now and built up our trad rack over the years, beginning small with a limited rack. As the gear is quite expensive for a private climber it is important to choose the correct one’s for your purposes and take good care of your equipment.

Meanwhile we have a full double set of cams from smallest to the largest. With some, smaller ones maybe triple. Than off course the stoppers or nuts and some specials. Like ball nuts.

Friends or Cams.  We use  Camelot C4, Camelot C3, Camelot X4 X4 from Black Diamond

Ball Nuts.  use Camp Ball Nuts

Stoppers or Nuts. We use some classic ones from Wild County and new Micro Stoppers nuts from Black Diamond 

Some Big off-width equipment Big Bro 4 from Trango

We use also slings and cordoletts for belaying or in between relays.

If you want we can give reviews of our equipment in more detail with some tips. Please leave a comment in this blog or send us an e-mail or go to our You Tube channel and leave a comment there. Or better please subscribe and ring the notification bell to see videos of us.

2 Small Adventurers 

Thanks Sandra and Jan from 2 Small Adventurers and Jan-San-Climbing

Exploring Val Durance in France 2020, are we Climbing or Hiking?

Hi All,

This summer we went again to the Val Durance area in France for a 2 weeks sport climbing adventure.We stayed in the neighborhood of Guillestre. Val Durance is called after the river the “Durance” that runs thru the area of Briançon  and Guillestre in the Hautes-Alpes. 

Our original plan was to do lots of sport climbing, but it became more a mix between hiking and climbing. In many occasions the hiking was extremely steep and exhausting but in the end it was great fun with great views and the weather was good.

Our resting day, was a steep hike in the Ski village Risoul doing the vertical trail “very steep” to the summit. Very nice and blue sky’s. We made some video’s and pictures there. The walk back was descending steeper and longer than expected. A nice refreshment in the touristic ski resort was a real threat. 

During our 2 weeks vacation we had heavy rainfall and San her air matrass became leak so we had to visit Briançon to buy a new one. Strikingly the world cup of lead climbing was going on where Adam Ondra made his victory in a wonderful show. We enjoyed that tournament.

Again we visited magnificent crags from which the views were stunning.

Mont-Dauphin:  Shade and sunny areas, conglomerate rock, sometimes technical and hard.

Jo Trango: New area for us, long ascent since you had to leave the car down below. Nice area but became to quick sunny and too hot for real serious climbing.

Le Ponteil: Always a top location. Great technical vertical routes and adventures long single pitches with great overhangs. Experienced some rain and thunder but achieved to manage some classic routes there.

Simoust: One of our favorites locations. Less crowded than Rue des Marques and super long exhausting routes, still a lot of development is going on.

Grand Bois: Long story, as we missed one day of climbing sincw we could not locate the crag good enough but too much hiking and wrong decisions along the way. A couple of days later we found it but were still searching for 2.5 hours. Climbing was good but we were too tired.

Saint Crepin: Our favorite, nice ascent to the crag, great views and quite unspoiled routes and very quit.

Rue des Marques: Both we still have problems with this area, too many people so very crowded and the routes are full of chalk. Nevertheless great climbing

Rocher Gafouille: Nice crag with great setting above the town Briançon.

If you read our blogs you must have noted that we started a You Tube Channel called 2 Small Adventurers. Small because we are not biggest climbers.

We offer people to watch our adventures which is more than only climbing but also all other kind of activities. We encourage you to watch our videos.

We hope that you enjoy the video’s and if you have any comments please let us know. To support us making videos and blogs please subscribe and ring the notification bell so you won’t miss another video. It’s all for free.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT6gN8jKZSI&t=77s

Our channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKV27nPiEusYylUz-wP4Euw

 Thanks for watching 

Jan-San-Climbing, 2 Small Adventurers

Trad Climbing in the Pfalz a real adventure, June 2020

Hi Guys or Girls,

Yes it has been a while that we wrote something in our Blog. This had many reasons but was mainly because of my shoulder injury that kept us from Climbing and even driving. So no Climbing.

Time heals everthing.

Now in 2020 with covid19 restrictions the borders opened at June 15th and we headed to Germany to climb in the Pfalz.

Without proper training we enjoyed a one week of Trad Climbing on the magnificint red sandstone of the Pfalz. As usual we used out Trad Gear with great pleasure.

We made some vidoes about our adventure and put it on YouTube. 

Please check it out and if you have question or comments please let us know.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKV27nPiEusYylUz-wP4Euw?view_as=subscriber

You can even subcribe to support us.

Thanks San and Jan

 

Leonidio Christmas Climbing 2018

Hi All,

Yes I know, we are very late with this blog but we will not bother you with our excuses.

This year we decided to go to another location during the Christmas time than our regular spot in Spain. So this time no multiple styles of climbing, no trad, no multi pitches but just "safe" sport climbing this end of the year. That saved a lot of weight in our bags for traveling.

Our condition was not optimal.

San had become better in shape after her neck hernia surgery but I still suffered from my shoulder injury between our holidays which is still far from cured so for both of us we had very limited performance goals.

On our car journey from airport to our house in Leonidio we had to survive the weather conditions and the slippery roads. Regretfully we run over quit some frogs during the dark and heavy raining night.

Next morning, the sky was open and blue, our holiday could start.

Just some pictures of our Holiday.

Bouldering Fontainebleau 2018

Hello Again, I'm slightly behind with writing my blogs because of I was quit occupied with a lot of different things. Again I picked our tradition of a long bouldering weekend with our friends in Fontainebleau.

Sven picked out a house for the weekend that was pretty close the some great bouldering area's.

I decided to go a little earlier since driving alone thru Paris, it turned out to be a good decision as it was relaxed arriving early in the afternoon at  the rented house. Meeting the host and placing my stuff into the house I went into the forrest for doing some easy boulders.waiting for my friends to arrive. They arrived and walked to me in the forrest. Great nice warm evening. We had a splendid long sunny weekend and although my shoulder said NO to bouldering I enjoyed every minute of it. Next time San will join again.