Remaining Branches: Pfänder Rock climbing

I think the next few posts I make are going to be about the new hobbies I have picked up since moving to Germany. The first one I am going to write about is rock climbing.

I have been rock climbing on and off now for a little bit and this weekend Gus took me out for the real thing. The place we went to is Pfänder (a MT in Bregenz, Austria). Beth and I have been there a few times before and Gus has told of this place and we had no idea where this was because we never saw a place that looked remotely close to rock climbing. Sure enough it is there. Beth and I have never been to this part of the MT as we thought Pfänder was only the tourist place with a cable car. Come to find out it is much more. Not that we can say we explored anything more either.

From the parking lot it is a nice hike to the climbing section of the MT. There are many other hiking trails with great views of the city and Alps as well. There's even a trail that will take you to where Beth and I have always gone before - a trail I think we will have to explore later on. My first day to Pfänder we chose easier routs (level 4 to 5). This was for 2 reasons: 1 it was my first time doing this outside on real rock, 2 it was the first time this year for everyone and a good warm-up run.

The first climb was easy, but it surely adds a level of realness to it. It is hard to explain but when climbing indoors things seem much safer and things like that. The second climb we tried to do a level climb (I forget the technical term for it) where you both climb up to the top of one and then continue on the next one. This is what is done if you want to climb lets say 60m up. The rope is 60 meters long but you have to have enough rope to go up and down meaning you can only go 30 meters up at a time. (Sorry fellow Americans but get use to meters rather than feet - you know the metric system is better anyway. Multiply by 3 and you will be close) This didn't work as we couldn't find where the top rope was and therefore it didn't make since to continue on, so we all went back down.

On Sunday Gus and I did the same place again (Lindsay and Jeremy came along but went hiking). This time we did some other climbs and higher climbs as well. I was doing great until the last climb of the day. This was a level 6+. I was doing great until I was about 5-8 meters from the top. There are 2 really difficult parts to this climb. the first one was getting over the sandstone section and the other was getting pass a smooth section on the rock. I couldn't figure out how to get past this section so I had to repel down.

There is a saying Gus and Lindsay told me about. It is "tops off for Power". A friend of theirs went climbing with them and before he started he said "TOPS OFF FOR POWER!!!!" and took his shirt off. Come to find out he was 95% professional. Well, part way up the climb I determined I needed more power and it was tops off for power time. After I did this Gus decided he better do the same thing and did.

Below are some pictures from my climbing weekend.