December climbing is kind of a love-hate-thing to me. At home it is freezing cold or the projekt is covered with snow, or it will be covered the next day. As the afternoonclimber that I am, the daylight allowes a maximum of four climbinghours and telling people about my minus-ten-degrees-afternoon-doing leaves usually a feeling of pitifulness and incomprehension. So in order to get a proper smalltalk about my afternoondoings running, I need to change something. I could pretend: I had some lonesome fourhourswalks in the snowcovered forest around my hometown, ...'you know, just to get closer to my chi or something' Option number two was to act accordingly to the conditions and drive somewhere else to get some nice climbing done. Somewhere people will understand. Somewhere the finger stick to the rock and the evershining sun fill the hearts with warmth and the muscles with agility. (ok, ok, now it starts getting really cheese) Before I sticked to option two, I had a beautyful climbingrelated autumn in austria. Amongst others my first ascents of 'federn' 8b and the 5-star-route 'die fünf Sinne' 8b+/c in Handlesberg/lower austria were outstanding experiences. During some gymsessions in oktober and november I felt the dark side of the power growing in the fertile ground of my shoulders and forearms and with the help of an icy wind and the support of the dark force (also to mention the breakfast served by my beloved mum) I could stick the moves of 'libre' 8B/B+. A Loskot-Boulder in the Felbertal/Austria with a hard first move and a really adoreable finish. And than dezember came and the first and best choice was to spend one week in fontainebleau. The crew psyche was high, the temperatures were not. It was almost too cold to get a pleasent holidayfeeling. Nevertheless we climbed five days in a row on the most smoothes sloperboulders there were. There was no time and moral for daylong projekting on hard stuff. Some of the mentioning boulders were: cannonball 7B, chatterton 8A (we did it jump and run, so don't take the grade seriously), dosage 7c, orchidee 7B (with wet slopers), supplement d'armes 7c+,... During New Year I head down to istria/croatia again. What a wounderful place with sunny southfaces, very kind people and endless limestone. On the first days I bolted a new Line next to 'hard sun' taking the same start and heading left after the first crux. Had a good fight on my thired try on the funky moves at the end. Guess the 'Fourtyfeedwoman' will check in with 8b+. Go get her! I could climb 'Nussknacker' 8b secound try as well. The last week of the trip was dedicated to 'Ruby silence' 8c/c+. A 15 meter long, Markus Bock Route, with delicate powermoves all the way to the last throw to a good jug three quaters up the route. On the thired day I surprisingly came past the cruxmoves falling as close as it gets. Newing, it was possible makes me dive deep into the world of having that one projekt, with that one opportunity to fail or succeed. The more importance I gave to these 15meter, the more it was hard to stay cool. To sum it up, it was the last try on the last day and it was pretty satisfying to finaly hang on the jug. 'Ruby silence' 8c/c+ is probably the hardest route I did on a climbingtrip so far. Cheers to everyone love u all -berni   "Der berg ruft" 8b Kompanjcroati "Dosage" 7c Fontainebleau   Berni working "Karma" 8a+, Fontainebleau