chossclimbers

Go back to Saxon Sandstone.
Go back to Decin And Family.

A 45-minute drive the next morning along progressively narrowing roads; one particular section near the end was overgrown with bushes on either side and featured a road sign showing a fat red circle with a white interior which I think is Euro for “stay the fuck out.” Nevertheless, we persisted and finally emerged in a tiny village on the German side. Helmut and Sophie (who’d serve as an interpreter for this first day) met us at a parking lot and we hiked up 10 minutes to a cluster of small towers. They looked at our assortment of pretied monkey head knots and only shook their heads. The main issue is that for cord of 7mm or less, it needs to be Kevlar or it’s just not strong enough when placing the knot as a nut. Instead, we borrowed a handful of Czech-made “ufos” [oofos] from Helmut – canvas protection which works a bit like a very large slider nut – to supplement our slings and cords. We did two very easy, single pitch routes (Winkelriss and Löschnerwand, both on Daxenstein Tower) to get used to the highly unusual protection. After that, we climbed a slightly harder Alter Weg on the small but proud looking Chinese Tower (Chinesischer Turm). This gave us a nice preview of a couple more towers for the following day.

Photos

Go to Bielatal Day 2.
Go back to Saxon Sandstone.