UKC

Hi everybody

I am visiting Germany in a few weeks and got a chance to visit North Frankenjura for 2-3 days. I am super excited to try some of the lines over there but not sure what are the best crags to go to Would be great to hear from someone who have already been there!

I found a guidebook but it is all in german and I only know how to say hello!

Thanks in advance
Tom

In reply to sasomsok:

Grade range?

In reply to sasomsok:

The Gebro Verlag guide is in English. There are about 800 crags and some are better than others, it depends on what you want.

In reply to jimtitt:

Thanks for this! Ordering now looking for easy sport climbing routes up to 7a. I only have 2 days so just want to explore and try a few different crags.

In reply to sasomsok:

I second Jim's recommendation of the Gebro guide. There are loads of lovely little crags in the 'jura and going to two or three in a day (via cakes & beers at the many good cafes and pubs) is a good option.

The cliche crag - roadside, polished, busy but nevertheless still good - is the Weissenstein. Dampfhammer is *the* definitive Frankenjura 7a and there are plenty of classics around that range. Would be a shame to only go there though.

Other crags to consider with good stuff in the 6c/7a-ish range would be Grüne Hölle and Schöne Aussicht. Roter Fels in Pegnitztal is large (by Frankenjura standards) and also has lots of classics around 6b/c.

There's a useful graded list of recommendations here:
http://topoguide.de/topoguide-Magazin/Sektoren_und_Routen_Franken.pdf

Bear in mind that Frankenjura bolting at most of the classic crags is a bit runout by modern sport climbing standards, you might want to take that into account when deciding how ambitious you want to be grade-wise.

In reply to sasomsok:
Just thinking (whilst ironing and therefore bored): the Frankenjura must be about the best documented major climbing area in the world.

There are three rival guidebooks (Schwertner, Thum, Röker). All three are good, all have more or less definitive coverage, all with pretty much up to date editions in print and easily available. Röker is bilingual English-German, Schwertner has an English-language selected edition ("Frankenjura Extreme"). Plus there is frankenjura.com, with a comprehensive routes database with topos etc.

Of all of which, however, only Röker is really of much use to the non-German-speaking up-to-7a climber.

In reply to AlanLittle:

Thanks for the advice Alan. I bought Volume 1 North Frankenjura english/german guide by Gebro Verlag.

Looking forward to receiving the guide and start planning it Looks like such a great place for sport climbing!

In reply to sasomsok:



A wise choice, that´s probably the one with a photo of me in it

In reply to jimtitt:
Whereas Volume 2 North Frankenjura english/german guide by Gebro Verlag has the major plus that one of my rather small collection of soft touch VIII- ticks is given a full VIII. This would make it my first ever 7a redpoint, except that the grade is blatantly, utterly laughable.

In general, one of the pluses of the Röker brothers (Gebro) guides is that they break slightly with the Frankenjura tradition of sandbag grades. But in this particular case they definitely go too far in the other direction.

In reply to jimtitt:


... whereas one of the pluses of the Thum guidebook is that he mostly has pictures of lightly dressed young ladies on the routes.