UKC

[UPDATED]Fabian Buhl repeats PsychoGramm, ~8b+ trad

© Jacopo Larcher/Barbara Zangerl
Fabian Buhl on Psychogramm, 8b+ trad, Bürser Platte, Vorarlberg, Austria  © Jacopo Larcher/Barbara Zangerl
Fabian Buhl on Psychogramm, 8b+ trad, Bürser Platte, Vorarlberg, Austria
© Jacopo Larcher/Barbara Zangerl

Fabian Buhl has made the second ascent of Alex Luger's PsychoGramm, ~8b+ trad, on the Bürser Platte at Vorarlberg, Austria.

Last year, Fabi, who until then was more or less only bouldering, repeated Prinzip Hoffnung, ~8b/+ E9/10, at the same crag, and then he went even further from bouldering by doing the multi pitches Silbergeier, ~8b+, and Nirwana, ~8c+.

At the moment, Fabi is training a lot for future boulder and multi pitch projects, but wood and plastic simply isn't enough for a climber like him, so on the days when he felt too sore to train, he figured he could go slab climbing on the Bürser Platte.

From his blog:

Last year Alex Luger opened Psychogramm, the very thin crack to the left of Prinzip Hoffnung.
After my ascent of Prinzip Hoffnung, I could not imagine to try it. Time passed and I got used to trad gear.

Not exactly a year later things have changed and I worked it on toprope until I felt confident enough on the boulderproblem, which revolves around a technical and cripmy sequence. I had to use some really bad footholds, which enabled me to make the big move, sometimes they popped off sometimes not, so the gamble was on...

It looks like a crack, but Psychogramm climbs like a faceclimb because you have always some crimps or something on the side of the crack.
The crack offers just enough protection to make it some kind of safe to climb on it clean.

I climbed with two belayers, just in case the micronut in the crux and the lower cam that also is not a 100% safe, will fail. In this case the second belayer hopefully is fast enough to run, in order to bring some slack in until you hit the good protection, unfortunately it is just below the half of the route... Nonetheless I decided to give it a go, after having checked the placements.

On my first try I was surprised, I was concentrated during the climb, but never felt uncomfortable with the situation. Unluckily the foot popped and I fell, luckily the nut caught me.

It took me another few tries over the period of 3 days, until the the foot stayed and I could keep it together to the top. This was the first repetition of Psychogramm and I was happy to climb on such a special climb and also see the big mental progress compared to last year.

I wouldn't be surprised if we'll see more action on this route sooner rather than later...

Fabian Buhl is sponsored by: Climb On, La Sportiva, Lapis and Petzl


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