KLETTERRUNDFAHRT

a one year climbing trip

[kletterrundfahrt]

03.07.15 - ROMANIA WEST To finish our month in Romania we headed further west towards the boarder of Serbia. We met friends I got to know 5 years ago in India and together we travelled to Baile Herculane. The town is in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains covered with forests and cliffs. Baile Herculane actually is quiet famous in Romania, not for the climbing, but for its hot thermal baths. After a day of climbing on the great limestone you can relax in the hot tubs down in the village as the former Romanian Kings and Queens did. There are hot tubs in different areas of town and its great to discover the baths and take a walk through some old abandoned bathing houses. The climbing and the rock quality was probably the best we have seen on our trip through the east of Europe. Even in the weekends we were the only climbers there and one of the main developers told us that so far they only bolted about 50% of the possible lines. Even with the hot temperatures it was possible to climb as the wall gets into the shade around midday.  The time there staying with local friends was a great end for our trip and for sure it wasn't our last time in eastern Europe.

[kletterrundfahrt]

01.07.15 - ROMANIA CENTER

On our way west we met an old friend who is living in Orastie, stayed a couple of days at his place and for the weekend he took us to a very remote village. It is situated in the mountains and you can only reach it with a 4X4 car. There the mother of his wife is living, remaining the last person in this village staying there for the whole year. There they grow most of their food their selves without additional nutrition or pesticides. Our friend, being a hunter, took us into the forest in the evenings to listen to the wildlife, which was a nice experience. In the area around the house you can find deer, european owl, lynx, wolves, bears, wild boars and a species of wild cat. We heard wolves and on our way back actually saw a bear. So far the nature was one of the most impressive things in Romania with scarcely populated areas and completely intact ecosystems.

[kletterrundfahrt]

30.06.15 - ROMANIA EAST Our first stop in Romania was Vama Veche, a party place at the beach which used to be a meeting point for hippies. The weather was hot again and after spending a couple of lazy days we decided to head further north. This part of the country is very flat and is covered with huge wheat plantations. The villages are all very small and horse carriages are a common sight on roads. We wanted to visit the Danube Delta but it was way to hot for us so we went on westwards and visited Brasov, a nice city with many historic buildings nestled in between forest-covered hills, which are famous for its high population of brown bear. Later, we had a ride on the very famous Trans-Fagarras road up the Carpathians mountains and actually found some snow, which was a nice change from the heat in the lowlands.

[kletterrundfahrt]

20.06.15 – BULGARIA / KARLUKOVO / BUZLUDZHA After leaving Rila we wanted to climb in a huge cave nearby the village of Karlukovo. The temperatures rose when we left the mountains and we were glad that the cave was a little colder. The white limestone forms a huge tunnel, the walls are mainly vertical and the huge roof reminded me of a church. Climbing on the wall is mainly technical with crimps, holes and tufas. Climbing the roof is probably powerful and hard, but looks incredible because of the beauty of the whole formation. The next days we spent at a wild place called Buzludzha, an old soviet monument on a remote hill surrounded by forest. The monument is huge and looks somehow surreal and it was a lot of fun to explore it. Continuing our travel, we drove to the black sea and up north to enter our next destiny, Romania.

[kletterrundfahrt]

14.06.15 - BULGARIA / RILA

We found out about Rila through the Petzl Roctrip page. It seemed to be the perfect area for the high temperatures as it is situated in a 25km long valley featuring Bulgaria’s highest mountains. This alpine valley is mostly famous for its ancient monastery. Every day dozens of coaches arrived at the monastery but 1km further into the valley none of the tourists arrived. Not having any information about the location of the climbs we spend two days searching until we probably found most of the bouldering. There are several rockfall zones in the valley which offer different qualities of Gneiss boulders. The rock is really compact, maybe even too compact. We found many beautifully looking boulders that looking from up close just had no features to hold on to. Still, there are very beautiful lines if you found them. The area still has quiet some potential for development but the lack of information and the access probably makes it difficult to establish it as a bouldering area. It definitely saves you many kilometres hiking if you can have somebody guiding you. Anyway, the nature reserve south of Sofia offers beautiful landscape and as we experienced in all ex-yugoslavian-countries so far, very friendly and hostile people.

[kletterrundfahrt]

04.06.15 - MACEDONIA After a while without climbing on real rock, we were planning to go bouldering in Prilep, Macedonia. We arrived after passing by the famous 300m deep lake Ochrid and were surprised by strong winds and cloudy skies. This made us lucky and we had two days of really good conditions in June, where usually climbing isn't possible due to the extreme heat. The granite there shapes hueco-like holds with a really rough grain. The area seemed to be a mix of Rocklands, Hampi and La Pedriza. Even though the amount of 5-star lines is comparably low, there are some really nice boulders in the range from 5a to 8a. After these two days the sun came back and made climbing impossible. To find lower temperatures we were planning to do our next stop in Rila/Bulgaria.

[kletterrundfahrt]

29.05.15 - MONTENEGRO / ALBANIA Entering Montenegro through the steep Tara canyon and playing the same game in small at the border was an adventure. Then we drove southwards to the coast again, visited the old town of Kotor and went on to Budva. There we happened to participated in a party of students, which came from all over ex-jugoslavia to have a competition between their universities in sport and science. It was really big fun, everybody was very open minded, we were rapidly integrated and were on our feet until dawn. The next "border-control-game" was interesting as well and led us into Albania. We directly noticed the cange of cars from VW Golf II and any other type of vintage Volkswagen model, which was standard before crossing the border to Mercedes C, E and M class. Many of the cars were still wearing stickers from their country of origin: mainly Germany. The landscape was still interesting and diverse, with very few people in the rural areas. Visiting the capital Tirane was a highlight, bad maintained streets were overcrowded with big expensive cars, and the mainly young people were all dressed up heavily and had a haircut like coming straight from the barber. But the people were as well really open a nice, so we decided to go to the barber as well and both received a really nice cut, albanian-style! So far Albania for us has been the biggest surprise, as it is burdened with strong prejudices back home, but instead we found a country full of energy and worth another visit. Following that experience we went on westwards to visit Macedonia.

[kletterrundfahrt]

27.05.15 - BOSNIA AND HERZOGOWINA Coming from Croatia we had the hardest border control of our travel so far. The officers checked more or less every corner of the car, asked a lot of questions and wanted to see documents we never heard of, but in the end we could pass and enter Bosnia for the first time of our lives. While travelling through the countryside we saw beautiful landscapes, a lot of abandoned houses, very old cars and sheep, cows and dogs on the streets. Most of the time a herder was somewhere around but sometimes a cow was on a walk, side by side with the owner, who had a leash which was wrapped around the horns. Like going for a walk with the dog back home, when it was raining even carrying an umbrella. In the City Mostar, where most of the tourists take a selfie at the historic bridge, you just have to go a few streets further and a lot of the houses still have scars of the last war. The impressive Monument in Tjentiste was our next stop, after which we went on towards Montenegro on unpaved road and already thinking about the next border controls.

[kletterrundfahrt]

24.05.15 - CROATIA Arriving at the sea for the first time after the cold days in Spain and Portugal was a great change. Still, temperatures were on the rise and with up to 28°C already challenging us. The first night we spent at a beautiful spot in the mountains close to a river, in which could watch many animals in the night with the light of our head torches. We were waked by the chainsaw of a local who was cutting trees quite close to the bus, but he was a nice guy and we tried to chat a bit. The beautiful coastline of Dalmatia with its crystal clear turquoise waters and small bays made us follow the coast all the way down to Paklenica. We were planning to do some climbing there, but the heat only let us climb a few routes before we escaped back to have a swim in the sea. We spent an evening in the old town of Zadar and traveled further south to the Krka Nationalparc. Our last stop in Croatia was the city of Spit. Even with the bus loads of Asian tourist, this was the most beautiful city we visited in Croatia. The Roman city centre with its marble alleys and the large bay make it a place worth to visit and enjoy the balmy summer evenings. 

[kletterrundfahrt]

21.05.15 - SLOVENIA

After leaving Maltatal we drove through the magnificant Triglav Nationalpark and were amazed by the beauty of the mountains and the magical clear water of the Soča river. We were invited to a friend of Clemens and spent a couple of days at his place. Our host, the owner of SAMSARA climbing holds, was very hosptitable and we climbed together, enjoyed the slovenien food, went for wine tastings and for a coffe to Italy. The landscape at Žiri, which is his hometown, is quiete similar to our hometown and we were observing similar habbits as well. Our next stop was Osp, one of the most popular climbing crags in eastern europe, and were amazed by the huge cave. The high temperature made us pretty lazy but hopefully we will get accustomed to the heat. After that we continued our kletterrundfahrt towards the border to Croatia.

[kletterrundfahrt]

13.05.15 - YOSESIGO / MAGIC WOOD / MALTATAL As our last stop for trad-climbing we choose the area of Yosesigo, close to Cadarese. It has some of the most impressive cracks we have encountered on our journey so far. The routes are up to 40m of clean splitter cracks ranging from offwith to finger size. The downside of the area is the long hike of 1000m altitude. We were lucky being able to hitch a ride up and down for the most distance. On our way back home we planned to stay in Ticino for some days, but the increasingly hot temperatures lead us further to Magic Wood. Conditions felt perfect and we both have been able to do the toprope ascent of the famous slab "Flatlander/Flachländer" 50m right of Intermezzo. Another highlight of our stay there was the first ascent of a line I cleaned two years ago with Derzou. A very technical slab traverse ("Beach Body") behind the beach-bloc (starts as "David Hasselhoff" and finishes to the right topout of the high arete). Returning home we organized our trip to the South-East of Europe and started off to Salzburg and Maltatal. The increasingly high temperatures made us climb in the evening, spending our days bathing and laying in the sun. Maltatal offers a great variety of activities, from fishing to sports-climbing and bouldering. Most of the nice boulders in the area range between the grades 7a-8b and are crowned by Klem Loskot's classics like "Bügeleisen" or "Emotional Landscapes".

[kletterrundfahrt]

17.04.15 - TICINO / VALAIS / ITALY After spending some weeks at home, recovering, enjoying the luxury of a bed and the hot tub, we went to visit friends in Freiburg and Innsbruck. In Innsbruck we used the possibility to ski a lot, climb and party. After all those activities we started for Ticino and spent a week bouldering in Chironico. The quality and quantity of the boulder problems amazes me every time! Both of us accomplished the boulder "Fengshui Masters", which we tried on our first stop of the trip, six months ago. The following week we were invited to join friends in their chalet in Wallis. A very nice week followed, we went hiking, enjoyed the upcoming summer, played boule and many other games in the evening. Then we went climbing again, drove to Medji, a small crag close to Zermatt. Not knowing what to expect, we were surprised by the quality and beauty of the climbs on the valley's great Gneiss. Next we travelled to Valle Formazza in Italy and visited Cadarese, which is famous for it's single pitch crack climbs. The granit forms clear splitters which are just partly bolted, so the trad equipment became handy once more.

[kletterrundfahrt]

10.03.15 - PORTUGAL

Starting from Madrid we arrived in Casal Pianos, Portugal after two days of driving through crazy rainfalls with car-shaking winds. This was also our most western point of the journey. Casal Pianos is a sea cliff in the middle of nowhere, about 20km north of Sintra. The whole cliff consists of basalt rock, a type of volcanic formation. The spectacular scenery and the great climbs make it worth a visit if you get in the area of Lisboa. Due to the continuously strong winds we decided to head further north to meet friends living south of Porto. We went climbing in a small local limestone crag and had a great day of surfing in Espinho. The weather wasn’t really changing to the better and we traveled further along the coast, enjoying the great choice of seafood and trying hard to get a catch ourselves. Unfortunately without success. As a last stop we visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao which is designed by Frank Ghery the world-famous american architect. 

[kletterrundfahrt]

02.02.15 - LA PEDRIZA

The cold temperatures and tough climbing days encouraged us to move on to Madrid, where we could stay with a friend and enjoy the advantages of a flat: hot showers, a warm bed and comfortable city life. After the celebration of Nico's birthday in Madrids nightlife, some days of rest and laziness we headed out to La Pedriza. We were amazed by the huge concentration of beautiful granite formations, from small boulders to huge multipitch egg shaped mountains. La Pedriza is very famous for its incredible slab climbs with difficulties up to 8b+. The razorsharp granite crystals provide incredible friction on footholds impossible to use in other type of rock. We got the tip to do a bivuac in a cave 1 1/2 hours out in the mountains for the best crack climbing of the area. So we went there with the friend from madrid and didn't regret the hike. Beside from crazy climbing we lived in a cozy cave, had a fire in the evening and experienced a lot of the local wildlife: vultures flying close, a fox trying to steal our cheese, some curious chamoises stalking us and small lizards climbing in front of us. Then rain came in again and we continued our trip towards Portugal.

[kletterrundfahrt]

13.01.14 - ALBARRACIN II

[kletterrundfahrt]

13.01.14 - ALBARRACIN I

After a nice Christmas Party in Chulilla with climbers from Chechz Republic, Austria and France we decided to move on to Albarracin for bouldering. Here the temperatures dropped every night below zero with the record of -11°C, but from there on it stayed dry and we enjoyed clear and sunny days. We met friends fromm back home and teamed up with them for climbing and had a crazy new years eve party on the crowded village square, dancing and welcoming 2015! The perfect red sandstone surprised us with incredible shapes, including huge roofs, slopy topouts, tiny crimps and some of the nicest 7a's we ever climbed!

[kletterrundfahrt]

23.12.14 - CHULILLA Driving southwards to Valencia and finally arriving in Chulilla, the landscape changed and the wheather turned out to be a lot warmer. Orange plantations, palms and cacti felt kind of tropical and hot sunny days made a pleasant welcome to our next climbing destination. A huge canyon cut though red limestone, in an scarcely populated area, makes a great place to stay. The climbing on the long and copmact walls, including huge tufas, are lots of fun and new experiences are waiting for us in all the climbs. This held us busy till now, with christmas coming up and the idea to visit Albaracin for bouldering, we will head north again in the direction of Madrid.