News

Thailand

16.02.2008

I’m back home again after spending one month traveling in Thailand. I hooked up with Gareth Parry and
first we did some climbing in Ton Sai. We climbed some routes there and went deep water soloing.
Deep water soloing was good fun even though some of the routes very quite dirty because they are so hard to clean.

On the east coast we checked out the boulders of Koh Tao. This island is widely known among divers. I had heard a lot of bad things about the climbing there, so I was very skeptical about the whole place. After a long search of the islands only climbing shop, I found out that it no longer exists. After a lot of effort to find someone who knows anything about the climbing, I finally manage to get a hold of Gareth who has been in Koh Tao a few days already and knows the place. He comes to pick me up on his scooter and drives us to an area called secret garden.

After a quick tour of the place and I soon find out that people where right when they told me that the rock here
is super rough. Well, not all of it. There is some pretty good rock to be found too, but mostly it is very rough granite.

On the first day we do a couple of first ascents and Gas shows me pretty much all of the islands hardest problems. First I climb James and the giant peach, the only V11 on the island. Then classics like Relec (V10) flash , M-150 (V10) and Dengue fever (V10). I also managed to flash Gareth’s new problem Coco nuts which is probably about the same difficulty as Relec, which seemed pretty soft for the grade.
It is hard to say if these grades are right or not because it is HOT! And it never gets much cooler than this.
After a day of climbing my fingers are begging for a rest day.

Overall I would say the place is well worth checking out. And if you’re not in the mood for climbing, there’s lots of others things to do on this beautiful island.

---

Click image(s) for a larger version.