Euro Boulder Roadtrip : Deutschland

Beautiful German Style Country House

Meself, Brothling and The Whippersnappers were invited to Germany by our good climbing buddies  Schtooly and Schelzer whom we met in Albarracin on our last bouldering adventure. It was an offer we couldn't turn down. Let me tell ya, the german hospitality knows no bounds, the boys hooked us up proper and we were very well looked after for the whole trip. We were picked up at the airport in Frankfurt and were driven to and guided around some of the most awesome bouldering areas in Europe before being deposited back at the airport for our journey home. From Jamie, Daragh, Adam and Myself I would like to say a huge thank you to Christian and Marco and their families for being so generous and showing us a great time that we will never forget.

Pfalz Panorama

From Frankfurt we were whisked off to the German lads hometown climbing area Pfalz, a huge rolling hillside region carperted in beautiful natural coniferous forest, green hills as far as the eye could see, every second hill with the top of a sandstone crag or tower peeking out over the canopy and accompanied by a quaint little country village. A very chilled out place to go climbing and drink a few delicious Wießbiers. There was trad and sport climbing on offer in these woods but we were here for the boulders and the place didn't dissapoint. The rock was a lovely red sandstone resembling the stone of Albarracin and providing lots of steep boulder problems, roofs and the German lad's favourites ... compression prows.

Daragh on a 6a in Sector Jurassic Park



I watched a few videos of Pfalz bouldering before the trip and I saw a problem that looked sweet called T-Rex 7B, its in an area called Jurassic Park and that was were the lads brought us on the first day. We warmed up on some lovely problems before trying a steep squeez prow called Arcteryx 6C, Adam beasted it, ''Jaysus these German grades are tough'' I thought to meself as I found the problem a bit morpho for me as I flailed on it over and over again. After this we headed over to try T-Rex, it was awesome and turned out to be the best problem of the whole trip. I never tried a 7B before and it felt like a big step up in difficulty, I could barely do any of the moves at the start, but a couple of hours work later I got from the bottom to three quarters the way through the problem, I was happy with the progress but completely physically wasted after only the first day of the trip. It certainly wasn't the last time we tried T-Rex, more on that later ...

Me on T-Rex 7B

The next day we went to a bigger area called Kalmit.  It was a quality bouldering area and we warmed up and got stuck in, I was wrecked after yesterdays battles and after a few 6A's and 6B's I was exhausted and my elbows and shoulders were telling me to take a break, there was a long trip ahead of us so I listened to them and had a rest. It was fun day and everybody got some good mileage in, except Jamie, his hip flexor injury flaired up from trying a move with a right heel hook, he was pissed off and worried about not being able to climb for the rest of the trip. The German lads beasted some 7A's that they had wired and it was impressive to see them in action, strong lads. They always seek out compression problems wherever they go and have developed a great style for these problems and have very good skill with their heel hooks.

5c in Kalmit

After this day we were tired and went back to Marco's where we drank some beer and were served up big bowls of tasty lasagne to fuel our weary muscles. We had a surprise for the Jamie, Daragh and Adam, we told them that we weren't just climbing in Germany and Magic Wood on this trip and that in the morning we would be driving to Fontainebleau, they couldn't believe it, they were psyched :) ...