[TobyD]

Any info much appreciated, especially on if there's decent 7a - 8a routes, and is the bouldering any good? cheers all.

[Houdini]

No such place.



There's an area in Germany called Pfalz though.

[grimer]

I've been a couple of times, and thought it was really nice. I never bouldered at the time much, so don't know about that. However, I'm sure there was once an image in the Dead Fit Birds... thread of a nude blonde stood in front of a particularly fine-looking chalked arete, which i think was in the Pfalz. In general, i found it great for adventury, slightly crusty routes with great tower-ticks to be had, cakes, summit route books, history. Fairly trad. Felt nice and ancient. That said, there were at least a couple of crags that offered harder sport climbs. The crag with Magnet Finger was good, and the route, Magnet Finger, looked amazing (7c?).

[Stu Littlefair]

There you go. Sounds perfect for you Captain Cream.
You can't be bored of the UK already?

[TobyD]

errrr ...not bored of the uk exactly  ulterior motives for disappearing off to Germany....

[TobyD]

O, cheers Grimer! That sounds right up my street; fairly trad and slightly crusty ... or was that the cakes? Or the nude blonde? 

[n_man]

We stopped off on the way to the Frankenjura and had three days of bouldering. Very mixed: one venue was good, two OK and the other three poor. Just got back from weekend in the Lakes, I will post more details in the next couple of days.

[n_man]

The guidebook Pfalz and Nordvogesen by Alex Wenner, Yann Corby and Ingo Bald was good enough for us to get around even though my German is limited. We had a good map though, easy enough to buy from a petrol station when in the area.

We did about 3 days there and stayed at Hauenstein as it was fairly central and had a few different places to eat. We stayed in a B & B equivalent, which wasn't cheap but very good value when compared to a British equivalent.

As we had no knowledge of the area we randomly chose a few crags that looked OK from the guide (all these were relatively close together):

Wartenberg was easily the best crag that we bouldered at. Good grade range from 5 to 7c.
Failed to find Jurassic Park (shame 'cos the pics look great in the guide).
Mandala Bloc had a good 7c trav and the crag on the same footpath if you kept walking had a few good probs in the 7's spread about on it. And another crag in the area that was just OK but frustatingly I can't identify it from the guide...

An English guy that we met out there said that he had been to look at the Haart area. He reckoned that it looked a good venue to go with a team, good lines but a few pads and spotters were required.