We want to put Westervik on the map as a bolder destination.
We were invited by Jim to come to the Westervik for the international boulder meet 2011.
And yeah, really excited. We got invited. We were in Sheffield at the World Cup and he introduced himself to us.
And he said, hey, you know, we have this boulder meet.
You're really exciting if you guys could come and join and help promote the area.
We were super psyched. And yeah, a few months later, now we're here in beautiful country land of Sweden.
Westervik as a place is wonderful.
It's like near the ocean and just has tons of bouldering.
So I guess it's the perfect place for a bouldering meet.
And there's a lot of nice Swedish people I've met and they're just friendly.
And they just want to do the same thing as I do. Just climb and have fun.
We have like areas close to Westervik that are developed.
But now we have some areas further south with really good rock quality and a lot of cool lines.
So there is still a lot of potential.
But I don't think that actually this speaks so much for the region here.
It speaks for like all of Sweden. There are a lot of boulders, like good quality.
People only need to get out there and start to brush stuff.
And I hope that a bouldering meet like this, where I can show for the broad mass what I have done,
could get inspiring people to go out there and create their own bouldering areas.
The hill doesn't stay at all. The whole wall is wet. So when we flag, it just gets wet.
Today it looks really sunny. And we think it will dry up today and we can go climbing.
We will crush everything today. That's the good hole for the top house.
I'm coming up here now the first time and I really love it here.
The thing is it's a bit spread out, but you go to the boulders and you brush it up and every line
is so unique. The moves are really crazy. And I climbed in a lot of different areas in Europe,
but the moves on these boulders here in Westervik are always the best.
When I compare it to Swiss magic wood, for example, or Breone, or also other areas,
like in Finland, the grading is totally exact like there. Maybe a few boulders are not that
hard graded, but others are really hard. And now we see like Daniel and Chris and the other
guys are traveling here and they are climbing with us. Grading is not changing a lot.
The hourglass, an incredible problem, definitely in the top five I've ever climbed.
On the approach to the boulder, you just see this boulder that's sitting up on this ledge,
this granite ledge, or some red face with these two opposing rails that run up and shape of
an hourglass, hence the name. Definitely one of the best problems I've ever climbed.
Come on. Come on. Did it feel good? Yeah, it didn't feel too bad. Amazing. It's one of the best
I've ever climbed on. That was done. Shit. What happened? I didn't go deep enough. Did it here or not here?
What you just witnessed there was the biggest hunt of my climbing career.
Hold it. Come on, Chris. Come on.
Come on. Get up there. Come on. Come on, Chris. Come on.
I was so nervous on the top there. I could hear it in your voice and when you were like, come on.
The rock is really cool on the, let's see if I can pronounce the name right, the
Bjorn block? Bjorn block it, I think. It's a really nice rock. All the rock here we climbed on is
really different. It's all the areas have different types of rock, different movement,
different styles, which is really cool. A lot of times you go to an area and it's all the same
rock, same style, kind of the same movements, and here it feels to me completely different.
Maybe it's all granite, I think, but maybe just different types of granite. Yeah, it seems,
I don't know, it's hard to, you know, can't say anything bad about this area. It's just really
perfect. I repeated some things that would be a first female ascent and yeah, I really enjoyed
myself here. So great things want to come back for sure. I think everyone should check it out.
It's great to have the opportunity to come to new areas and I feel lucky that I was able to come here.
I'm happy, so happy to have them here. Not for me personally, but for the Swedish bouldering
scene, just to have them come here and see all the boulders and climb on them. It's really cool
and I think they all like it, seems like that, so I'm really happy. Alex and Daniel and Anthony are
the best climbers in the world, so you have them on your boulders, actually repeating some of the
hardest stuff. They actually made a repeat on the mast. It has been out there since 2004,
and no one else actually repeated. Kind of cool, I think.
It's been awesome, actually. I didn't know what to expect on first sighting. Everything's quite
flat, the landscape around and I wasn't expecting too much, to be honest, and it sort of came here
and the reclimbing is exceptional. Come to Vestervik. Yeah, come to Vestervik, check it out,
and to the guys who put on this event, thanks very much. It's been awesome to be a part of.
Thank you. Thank you. I don't want to come back next year.
Usually just turn the gas on and press the ignite button and you have food after 10 minutes or so,
but this is a little tricky. It was on the grill for at least 20 minutes on really low heat,
so maybe just the outer got grilled a little bit. We're marinating the cast iron skillet
in butter and whiskey. Double wood aged 12 years, single mott scotch whiskey, 43% alcohol.
This is my first time grilling steaks, complete freestyle.
