Bergschenhoek Team Day

A remote expedition like we've planned definitely needs some proper preparation, so for this reason we planned monthly training and teambuildings weekends to ensure everyone would be ready. The focus would be mainly on stamina, climbing and mountaineering skills.

Our first trip was, unfortunately, planned on a day that people might have been slightly hungover from a student festival in Delft so the first plans were to go to the Tikibad and put ourselves to great use there, floating around and eating french fries. After some time we figured we might as well stay at home if we'd were to do this. So the next plan was to enjoy the weather and go to Monte Cervino in Bergschenhoek, an outdoor artificial climbing rock (yep holland's pretty flat so this is all we got). This basically is a scaled down Matterhorn, where you can climb both the inside and the outside.

The Bergschenhoek climbing wall, shaped like the Matterhorn

Enne and Mariet crossing eachother at the stance

During the day we practised mainly our climbing, rope skills, belaying and some abseils. And since we had all the ropes and gear ready, we finished the day repeating some glacier rescue techniques. When in an emergency situation everyone should be able to use these techniques quickly and efficiently. Since we might be needing these on Kang Yatze (hopefully not!) it was good to practise these, but everyone still pretty much got the hang of it.

Raoul saving Mariet from a dangerous crevasse

With all the rescue and rope techniques fresh in our memory, and sore hands of climbing all day, we luckily were still just able to hold a beer and enjoy the evening sun!