Private Interests

I like:

Traveling
Running
Skiing
Climbing
Genealogy
Genealogi
My Personalized Computer (PC) is a computer that I designed and built myself. I also have a Home Theater PC.

Traveling

Here is a summary of some of my travels:

1988: Uzbekistan
1989: Western-Europe
1989: Nepal
1990: Eastern-Europe
1992: Greenland
1993: Anatolia
1995: Chile
1995: Kenya
1996: Gran Canaria
1997: Marocco
1998: Costa Rica
1999: New Mexico
2000: California
2001: Iceland
2001: Sweden
2004: Guadeloupe
2006: Paranal

Uzbekistan

From the bazaar in Samarkand

Western-Europe

A small road in the Pyrenees.

The bicycle-trip to Spain was 6 weeks long and took me through Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Andorra and Spain.

Nepal

Children in Kathmandu

My father on the Khumbu-glacier close to Tibet (Alt. 5200m)

At this point we are on our way to Basecamp Mt.Everest, probably the highest and most beautifully placed junk-yard in the world.

Eastern-Europe

Istanbul

The bicycle-trip to Istanbul was 8 weeks long and took me through Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Austria and the former DDR.

Greenland

Map-check on the peninsula of Narsaaq in SW-Greenland

Anatolia

From a dusty road in central Turkey - where the weed grows as tall as a man

Chile

From a trek round the volcano of Villarica in Chile

Mount Kenya Summit 1995

Trek in the National Park of Mount Kenya.

A diary of the climb of Mount Kenya done in July '95 by
Lars Kr. Lundin & Claus Bendtsen.

Feel free to use any of the following information, but don't be sure that it is correct or in any sense useful.

From Nairobi to Nyeri (2/7):

Some hours with a matatu.
Found info on matatus in 'Lonely planets' - 'East-Africa'.

From Nyeri to Park gate (3/7):

A rather muddy dirt road app. 15km, not suitable for walking or normal cars/buses. Paid 20USD for someone to drive us there in a 4WD.

Park Entry (Alt. app. 2400m):

Day fee 12USD, night fee 8USD - with some sort of student discount.
The number of day-fees to be paid must be number of night fees + 1, hence an odd amount of money must be presented in cash either in USD or Kenyan shilling, no mixing of currencies possible.
We only had 10USD-bills and they had no change - would not give change in Kenyan shilling, would not keep change. So we waited some time (occurs frequently in East-Africa) before someone came and sold us two 2USD-bills.

From Park gate to end of road at Met station (Alt app. 3100m) (3/7):

No porters or guide required, and we did not use any - rucksacks app.35kg.
10-15km dirt road suitable for walking.
Can be done with 4WD.
We walked to acclimatize ourselves.
We camped 200m further than the end of the road, and found water somewhere to the left of the general direction of moving.
Began eating diamox.
Had problems with our ceramic water filter, but did get enough to drink in spite of diamox. Our back-up water-cleaning, namely iodine, had by accident been packed in the rucksack of a friend not joining us in this part of the trip.

From end of road to BC beneath Diamond col (4-5/7):

After crossing the wood-line (2-3 km's from the end of the road) the passability of the terrain decreased significantly - patches of long grass and a thin and very slippery layer of black mud in between.
Hard to keep balance (because of rucksacks), tirering.
Not much water.
After some (5-8?) km's the ground gets dry (alt. app. 3800), and easy to walk. And it became easier to find nice looking water.
Due to the filter problem and the diamox I decided to drink some uncleaned water and had no problem with that.
We were all the time letting the other know about nausea, head-aches, etc., and whenever there was some, we took breaks till we felt OK.
My symptom felt like wearing a too small steel helmet.
We camped at app. 4000m a few hundred meters from a manned stone-building where we were offered accommodation (for some payment).
The walk on the dry ground was quite nice, lot's of different mountain animals and a nice view towards Batian & Nelion. After a few km's we came to some sort of post for park wardens - some stone buildings. We informed them of our plans, and told them that we expected to be back in 3 days.
At around 4200m the path got steep and rocky, but still OK to walk.
At around 4600m a rocky plateau was reached, when looking ahead (and upwards) one sees the impressive Diamond col. BC was established in a shelter called something like 'Thomsons bivi', found to the right on the plateau. It has room for two + gear & cooking. Water was found 100m away in a small lake in the direction of the glacier-line. Spent the afternoon relaxing, preparing the climbing gear, plus doing a bit of climbing on the lowest part of the glacier.

From BC to Ice-window (6/7):

We got up early in the morning (the first part of the glacier could be climbed easily in darkness) using no belay. Dawn broke as we reached the end of the first glacier part. Set up belay there and traversed left into the hidden col and set up belay there. A very nice climb up through the hidden col - app. 5 m's are really steep. Rock and ice felt good.
Good sitting belays on the rocky sides. Reached the end of the col and traversed 10m left just underneath the roof of the Diamond glacier to a small plateau - app. 60cm X 3.5m. As we had a break there it began to snow - it poured out over the edge of the Diamond glacier, so we were glad to sit sheltered below the overhang. When it stopped snowing it was so late, that we decided to camp there (alt. 5000m). As the sky cleared and the sun went down the view was absolutely awesome. We melted snow for water (the MSR-stove worked really nice despite of the height, unlike other stoves I have tried), ate and went to sleep on our inflatable bedrolls in our sleeping-bags + goretex bivi-bags. Little or no feeling of nausea & head-aches.

From Ice window to summits (7/7):

Early in the morning we climbed the Diamond glacier - held a bit to the right as to be able to belay on the rock. As we reached the Gates of mist we were no longer in the shadow and it became quite warm. We took off our crampons (as there was no more ice & snow), and left the day-packs on the Bation side of the Gates. When climbing Batian we did at first not traverse far enough and ended up in some rather unpleasant rock. We turned back and traversed across some rock that did not look to good, and found the col leading towards the summit.
As it often happens it was cloudy when we got there, but we still felt good about it. We took some pictures and went back to the day-packs at the gates. As it was still early in the day we climbed Nelion as well. From there we overlooked the entire National Park and took some more pictures. The shelter up there was OK, it had some mattresses. It was quite low, but could accommodate several people.
No feeling of nausea & head-aches.

From summit to BC (7/7):

We abseiled down the same way as we had climbed up, with the exception that we abseiled directly from the overhang of the Diamond glacier into the hidden col. It took somewhat longer than we expected, and the descent from lower part of the hidden col to the BC was done in darkness. We reached BC after 40 hours on the mountain. We were a bit dehydrated, quite exhausted, but felt OK. Since we were low on cash we had to be out of the Park the end of the following day, otherwise we would have to pay an extra park fees, not leaving us enough money to get us from the park gate to Nyeri. So we packed our things and started walking back.

From BC to Park gate (8/7):

The walking was somewhat difficult in the darkness, and my buddy fell now and then. I had kept my plastic boots on, and it made things somewhat easier for me. At around two we found the post and contacted the wardens. We were exhausted and accepted an invitation to sleep on some mattresses inside their house. At six in the morning we got up, and by then we were asked for some dollars for the accommodation. This was unexpected (had we not been so tired when arriving, we would have realized that their hospitality was offered in the expectation of some payment). We ate some cold high-energy food and went on. By now I wore normal boots and when crossing the slippery mud-covered ground it was my turn to take some falls. When we reached the wood-line my trousers were muddy to the knees. At noon we arrived at the met station, where we met a park-warden that agreed to take us to the park gate for a price we could afford. He was apparently not supposed to make money this way, because he dropped us off a few hundred meters from the park gate.
As we reached it we were approached by a (white) man who had seen our rucksacks. He asked us some very qualified questions about the climbing, and surprisingly he went away and came back with a large photograph showing the Diamond glacier and the hidden col. It turned out that he was the chief warden (his name is Bongo Woodley). He told us that there normally is a rather large overhang at the beginning of the Diamond glacier, and that climbers therefore make a hole through the ice as to reach the upside of the glacier. Hence the name of the route. He also told us that there to his knowledge not had been anybody else on that route for a month. He was surprised that we descended down the same route, especially because somebody (austrians?) had inserted bolts with rings every 25m down an easier rock-route (I can't remember its name). It would however had been a long walk from the end of that route to our BC. The chief warden had a man going to Nyeri (in fact the same man that we had paid to take us from the met station to the park gate), and he offered us a free ride with this car.
We accepted gladly and departed.