I was at a newly opened local wall at the weekend, one of three owned by the DAV in the Greater Munich area, and in comparison to other modern walls it’s amazingly slabby. Most of the terrain is from just below to just above vertical with only a few much steeper sections.
I wonder what has prompted this and if less steep walls are going to be a general trend. I suspect the DAV have looked closely at the visitor traffic at their other walls, both of which have large fairly newish sections (about five years old) and noticed the less steep terrain is always crowded and the big overhangs often much less so.
If so then this has a lot to do with beginners – especially the majority of beginners who aren’t strapping young blokes – finding the steep stuff intimidating, and rather less to do with providing more realistic training opportunities for actual climbers. But I wonder if it might benefit us as a side effect too. In reality I rarely find myself hauling huge jugs on massively overhanging terrain except indoors. Our local setters also tend to be actual climbers, and I found that they’ve generally done a good job of setting technically challenging not so steep routes.
There was a crimpy 6c with a just barely overhanging crux on which I managed to get quite adequately pumped despite the lack of steepness. But also a slabby 7a that had nice thin moves, but I decided not to adopt it as a project for fear of losing a kneecap to one of the jugs on the adjacent Yellow 4+. That is a big problem with lead walls that aren’t overhanging.
(There was an IFSC standard speed route to, but I didn’t get on it for fear of not being able to do it at all. Those red starfish blobs are more rounded than they look on the telly)
