Back in Chamonix after a trip to the Frankenjura

Last weekend was a DMM road show event in the Frankenjura in Germany, so I rocked up and met up with some friends from Wales and did four days of cragging, which was brilliant.

Here’s a couple of photos of Pete from the weekend.

Pete 'Throbber' Robins redpointing the short 8a of Leftfield at Marientaler Wande

Pete 'Throbber' Robins narrowly missing out on the onsight of Katapult (7c) at Gossweinsteiner Wande

We mainly did classic routes in the 7th grade, as it was a short trip and also very, very hot, (with a few flashes of 7c’s between the team), but Pete and I did briefly try Master Blaster – a very bouldery 8b. Pete blew it with the glory jug in his hand. Unlucky!

My favourite route was the classic Kurt Albert route of Fight Gravity, which I did on the last day, very tired and longing for cake and beer. It was super good fun, even though I felt like my arms were hanging off!

The Frankenjura is such a great place to climb, with Kellerbier and lovely cakes never too far away. It was also really nice to meet up with Sarah Seeger, a fellow Marmot climber after I had climbed a little bit with her in Wales earlier in the year.

• You can check out more info on the Frankenjura in this UKC Article

Massive thanks to Ben from DMM – he was the man of the weekend and he did a very good job. He did very well.

Anyway – after the Frankenjura, I managed a short and extremely hot session in the Schwäbische Alb! Yeah! A quick try on the infamous ‘Snail’ was great fun and I am psyched to try it again.

This 30m route is a superb bit of limestone, graded 8b (it’s a tough one…) and it has a heart breaking last move. Brilliant. You can see a photo on 8a.nu

The Schwäbische Alb is a quiet climbing area, a little bit like the Frankenjura, in the south of Germany.

Now I’m back in Chamonix and the weather is lovely. I am super psyched at the moment for sport climbing and have loads of projects to try. The list is never ending.

To get psyched I just watched a video of Fred Rouhling on Salamandre (9a+) which is just down the road from me…