New Climbing Season in Chong Plee

After such a long and wet raining season, it seems now the weather has turned to be much better and I believe everybody would agree with me saying that the new climbing season has officially started again!

In order to celebrate the beginning of the new season we formally donated the money gathered so far through the Chong Plee Fundraising Project to Mike, a little treasure of 10,000THB, and I really hope we would be able to deliver new donations in the next months.

A growing climbing community...

It is quite easy to notice that in the very last few months Phuket Climbing scene has evolved at a rapid and constant speed.

If Rock Climbing in Phuket was initially confided within the limited possibilities offered by a few fellas sharing their house-walls with their friends, today many more people are joining this amazing activities.

Art-C House - Grand Opening Postponed

As many of you have surely seen on our Phuket Climbing FacebookPage, in the last weeks we shared several posts and pictures of a New Climbing Wall located in Phuket Town inside the Art-C House.

Art-C House Management organized several testing climbing session and Phuket Climbing was friendly helping to spread the word across the climbing community gathering very positive feedbacks and warm worlds of encouragement from anybody participating the events.

Yoga, Climbing & Meditation....

David is a professional yoga teacher based in Phuket who recently started doing rock climbing and we asked him to share with us his own personal perspective about climbing.

The idea was to gather some nice point of view from a beginner perspective, eventually his words turned to be very inspiring.

Take a deep breath and be ready to be hypnotize by his words....

Climbing in Chong Plee - History, Development and Fundraising...

Spirit Mountain is a little rocky hill located in Chong Plee, only 5 minutes driving from Ao Nang, in the province of Krabi, Thailand

This little climbing gem is currently gathering more and more visibility among the climbing community both because its super easy access, and also because the very nice mix of climbing styles and grades, which make this crag a perfect spot for beginners, a very inspiring habitat for intermediate climbers and a great playground for expert climbers.

Climbing in Chong Plee - Fundraising Project to bolt new routes!

A few days ago talking with a good friend of mine we kind of realized that nowadays many climbers have a very little knowledge of climbing ethics, climbing rules, history of climbing, bolting technics or mere financial costs behind the development of a new climbing area.

Despite what some people might think, equipped climbing spots are not gifts of an invisible god, and they do not grow up naturally, instead there is a lot of work, passion, research, and financial efforts often undertaken individually by a restricted number of independent climbing developers.

Bouldering in Phuket - Granite boulders ready to be cleaned up!

As everybody can easily realize, Phuket has a great abundance of hills mostly located around the area of Kathu and all across the west cost of the island.

In some of them many tourist companies are organizing elephant camps, others have been equipped with zip lines or other adventurous activities, however the majority of them are still partially unexplored both because of their steep profiles but also because of their inaccessible and lavish vegetation.

 A few weeks ago I had the occasion to join a famous zip line program, the experience was really amazing, but even more amazing was the fact that the entire area is immersed in the deep jungle and populated by a number of big granite boulders.

Climbing in Chiang Mai – First time at Crazy Horse Buttress

After almost 4 years living in Thailand I finally had the opportunity to take a few days off to visit the city of Chiang Mai, and of course to spend 3 full days of Climbing at Crazy Horse Buttress.

Crazy Horse Buttress is a popular climbing area predominately equipped and developed by CMRCA which is probably the most active climbing company in the whole Thailand.

Although the crag has many different spots, we only managed to climb at Crazy Horse which is the main area and offers the larger number of routes, we climbed at The Horse Shoe aka The Hoof and on our last day we eventually managed to climb at The Furnace which to me is probably the best wall of the entire area.

Climbing in Koh Yao Noi - Climbing is banned!

A few days ago I was approached by Phuket Gazette in regards of the recent appalling order of closure of all the climbing areas in Koh Yao Noi.

Some of my comments where later published in the last paper version of  Phuket Gazette and today I am happy to see that the article has been posted ONLINE.

Considering the innumerable issues covering the tourist scenario in the whole south of Thailand I really wonder what is the real reason behind this illogical restriction, which to me it makes no sense at all.

Climbing in Chong Plee – Sending again after pregnancy stop

The very last time I climbed in Chong Plee – aka Spirit Mountain, was just a few months before my gorgeous baby-boy Ettore was born and now he is already incredibly 7 months old!!!

In that occasion I managed to send a classic route of the crag called Grace -7a and the video showing the crux sequence was posted on our Phuket Climbing Facebook Page.