The headline might seem a little confusing, because: what’s half a route?
Last fall I finally finished bolting a pretty hard project through the central part of Zigeunerloch’s steep roof. As I was pounding in the bolts I looked down to the right of the line I was working on and saw a few nice underclings and a big pocket. It all looked like a very climbable line to me, but the rock in the lower section looked iffy to me.
Not much later I returned with my power generator and drill to check it out. The rock wasn’t as bad as I expected but I had to place the second bolt kind of high in order to avoid a hollow zone and sink it into solid rock.
From there it looked promising. Some bigger holds emerged and after a prominent bulge at about 10m I put in a permanent sling as an intermediate lower off.
The climb continues through steeper terrain, about 45 degrees from vertical on big holds and merges into a leftward traverse on good underclings. Just as the pump kicks in you have to switch into body-tension modes for the final crux which is a complete roof. The climb ends at a big hole in the black section of the roof.
Originally my plan was to continue the climb all the way out of the cave but the rock just turns to crap afterwards and it didn’t seem realistic to me to go on. The new climb is called Kabinenparty and will be somewhere in the 7c to 8a range.
Since this route actually climbs quite nicely after it was cleaned I was motivated to try a line even further right where the rock isn’t always as nice and solid as you might want it to be. After 2 days of cleaning and drilling with my buddy Michael the new line on the far right end of the Zigeunerloch was ready to be climbed.
[A Tyrolean climber named Alex attempting the 3rd ascent of Boltimore, 7a+]
I was stoked when I did the first ascent of Boltimore, roughly 7a+, because the moves are way more fun than I expected them to be. Even my friend Nicolas from France who did the second ascent thought it was good. And the frenchies know about rock quality!
So let’s sum it up:
Boltimore, 7a+
Kabinenparty, 7c+/8a?
And, here is half a route: Kabinenparty to the intermediate lower-off: 7a+/7b
(Thanx Nicolas for the pix!)
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