Hello Ben,
This season so far has been a total bummer in the Alps. When it didn't rain, it was warm and humid. Not exactly what a rock climber would want...
At first the plan was to use a period of no exams at uni for bouldering outdoors from April until June, but things didn't happen as expected.
In April I wanted to focus on the Zillertal valley, but unfortunately it was just two days we spent there because it always rained and those two days where kinda dry but warm. Luckily I was able to tick off some classic lines between font 7b+ and 8a but the real projects of mine were out of the game. Conditions too bad. As the rain continued in May, there was a shift from desperate attempts of outdoor sessions to gym bouldering and nightlife in Innsbruck with the Innsbrooklyn crew (Zlu, Emi, Mario, Korni.... everybody tired of wet rock)....
After a while I changed plans and thought that going south would be better so I packed up my VW van and set off to Val Daone. It wasn't any better there either, some nice classics in the bag, but still just not the real thing, anything hard was just not possible...
Back to Innsbruck, with thoughts in my mind like changing my sport to canoe-river-riding, rafting or whatever, the moisture was so intense I felt that soon some serious mould would be growing in my crib and even behind my ears! Ha! Never the less I stiuck to bouldering though, and even though it wasn't like we love it to be condition-wise, it somehow became a motivation challenge to try to do hard stuff on absolutely shit days with 30° and high humidity. It paid off every once in a while, like that one day in the Zillertal when I ticked off the classic "El Gauharra" (font 8a), an incredible crimpy test piece put up by Gerhard Hörhager.
As I am writing this, nothing really has changed in the local weather situation and all of us are still pinned down here in Innsbruck, training in the gym and trying to have faith that very soon it's gonna be better and some epic sessions on our blocs here will take place!
Cheers,
Juri