Climbing in the Palatinate: report and course

On a sunlit piece of rock about ten metres up from the ground, you can tell who the real experts are. Both feet wedged in a crack, I’m holding my balance on a small ledge with my left hand and trying to secure a friend with my right hand. While I’m praying I don’t run out of strength, a lizard darts across the smooth rock next to me and disappears into a crevasse further up. I follow it much slower and less elegantly until the route finally ends on a small tower of red sandstone, just above the treetops. All around, more rocks rise up out of the green mixed forest and small villages are scattered between the gentle hills. I suddenly think: the Palatinate Forest isn’t just a paradise for lizards.

Sandstone with tradition

Rock climbing in the Palatinate is not only a great tradition, it also has its own peculiarities. Chalk is only allowed from difficulty levels of 7+. The hooks here are what’s known as ring hooks, and there aren’t many of them. However, because the rock is much harder than in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, for example, climbing devices such as friends or nuts are allowed in the Palatinate. So wherever you find cracks, you can easily place your own interim protection.

And that’s precisely why we’re here: the Transa sales advisors Sasa, Swinde, Dominique, Gian and me, Julian, editor of 4-Seasons. We want to find out from Höhenfieber mountain guide Jörn Heller how to secure routes with moveable safety devices. This type of rock climbing is called ‘trad climbing’ or ‘clean climbing’ because you leave no traces behind when you climb.

When we arrived in the Palatinate from Basel on our first day, we find that the real rocks have to dry off first from the rain. Since we wanted to be well prepared for our first clean climb anyway, we began by practising on an artificial wall made of rough stone blocks with perfectly spaced gaps. Be it a two-point Camalot or a five-point stopper, there’s a suitable crack here for the whole range of mobile belay options. The subsequent load test using a foot sling is done at a moderate height. If anything comes loose, nothing serious can happen. We set belay after belay, traverse back and forth in the foot slings and get an initial feel of what holds and what doesn’t.

The south face of the Hochstein is the quickest to dry out and we first get used to the real Palatinate red sandstone in the top rope. This fairly soft, sedimentary rock really does have a slightly sandy surface and is very different to the gneiss, limestone or granite most of our group are used to from sport climbing or alpine multi-pitch routes. We find great single pitches ranging from difficulty levels five to six – and then we realise that you get nothing for free in the Palatinate. Even on the lower difficulty climbs, you have to climb cleanly. At the same time, Jörn reviews the basics of belaying with us so that everyone is at the same level before things get serious. We also gen up on the correct way to set up a belay with one small but crucial difference: no bolts are used at all. You have to look twice to make sure the cam is in place.

Extra-sharp rope end

At last we venture up the first multi-pitch route. Two rope teams ascend the ‘Grey Wall’ in the middle section of the Hochstein massif. The sharp end of the rope is now extra sharp for the lead climbers. They must set the belays that will ultimately hold their entire rope team. Thankfully the 4+ difficulty level is easily within our capabilities. This gives us enough margin to fully focus on placing the intermediate belays correctly.

Mountain guide Jörn climbs with us, giving tips. He tells us how to plan our tactics before climbing. He advises us on finding a good place to stand and position a belay, tells us to attach the clamping devices to the harness in the right order, if possible placing a belay right before and after a difficult section. Then it’s all about keeping the rope friction to a minimum by consistently extending the quickdraws. The info keeps on coming...

Our heads are spinning from all the details we get each day. It’s a good thing that climbing in the Palatinate also has other fun stuff on the agenda. Our base is a traditional country inn in Hinterweidenthal with great local food. It’s autumn. There’s new wine and onion tart – and anyone interested can try the famous Pfälzer Saumagen (Palatinate pig’s stomach) with chestnuts. A meal like this is a great way to think about what you learnt that day, and even though we’re a long way from the big mountains, we’re still in one of the most historic climbing regions in Europe. This is where the art of free climbing was cultivated. Climbers such as Reinhard Karl and Wolfgang Güllich put down their first markers in the Palatinate before achieving international renown for their feats in the Franconian Jura, Pakistan and Patagonia.

Short climb from the car park

It’s not just in the climbing guidebooks that you stumble across big names – sooner or later you’re bound to come across a legendary route, like we did at Bruchweiler Geierstein. Like almost everywhere in the Palatinate, the ascent from the car park is short. We approach the massif from its spectacular side. The front of the rock wall emerges between the trees like a giant ship’s bow. We are looking directly at the ‘Superlative’, first route climbed in 1978 by Wolfgang Güllich and his rope partner Thomas Nöltner.

At the time, the solid ‘eight’ was considered the hardest free climb in western Germany and it caused controversy: Güllich and Nöltner had prospected the route with ropes from above and even drilled ring bolts into it. This contravened local climbing codes, which at that time only allowed access from below. A dispute ensued that shook up the scene and was part of the ‘Palatinate bolt war’. The bolts were not only repeatedly chopped off and then replaced again: in a bizarre culmination, someone poured oil across the route, aiming to destroy it.

You can still see the oily residue, but this legendary route is climbable again – it’s just slightly out of our league. But right alongside it, on the south face of the Geierstein, we find our own challenge and dare to go up one difficulty level after our training over the past few days. The ‘Schnapsweg’ intersection (6-) is one of the best routes of this difficulty level in the Palatinate and we all climb it using our own belays.

A few metres behind our accommodation, the Teufelstisch (Devil’s Table) juts out of the oak forest. A massive slab of rock lies on a relatively slender stem like a giant sponge. The 284-tonne slab protects the stem from further erosion. Three spectacular routes lead through the roof up to the table, the easiest of which is a 6+. But there are hardly any bolts and even fewer cracks for mobile belays – if you fall in the wrong place, you risk falling right down to the ground, even with the rope protection. We pass this time – well, you’ve got to have some goals for the next time.