Good Friends, Climbing And Steel

Tour du Ruhr 2019

Climbing is a many-faceted sport. Despite bouldering for two years myself and six weeks after Bengt’s and my Via-Ferrata-Trip in Austria my understanding the specifics of roped sport-climbing was still almost nonexistent. Yet, I was curious! Bengt had proposed that he would introduce a few friends to it once he would have completed his climbing course in the alps, I agreed to join the fun. Planning this, we chose to take some of our last vacation days in late summer for an easy stay in the city of Essen in the center of the Ruhr valley. There, we had spent previous summers visiting music festivals and the like; thus, knowing the lay of the land, this would give us some insurance against bad weather that Germany is prone to even in August. Lucky for us, that threat never realised and we were in for four days of climbing in boiling, humid heat.

„Bochumer Bruch“, Saturday, 24th – Sunday, 25th

This is another article by Jost, who has joint me on several trips sofar and will hopefully continue to do so!

Having arrived only the night before from Hamburg and Mallorca respectively, and having been taught the basic principles, knots and safeguards of sport-climbing for an hour or two after breakfast, the four of our troupe took to the car for our first roped climbing a bit to the south of Essen. Our destination, the „Bochumer Bruch“, lies hidden at the edge of the little town of Wülfrath: A former quarry that got retired in the 1950s, it has been a nature reserve ever since and is open for a limited number of climbers per day. This means that you actually have to pay a small fee for climbing there and adhere to some rules of conduct meant to preserve of the local wildlife. Due to this limitation there’s never too big a crowd in the quarry, though, so if you’re an experienced climber, you’ll have plenty of choice among the 80 routes (46 of them being rated UIAA grade 7 or higher). For beginners like us, however, there are only 10, 15 routes at most to choose from. As the sun was shining and the quarry is completely overgrown with trees with plenty of shade to hide in, the place was packed with climbers that afternoon! Sure enough, we had to wait for a spot to open up where we could put our hands on real rock for the first time.

I got to admit, it was well worth the wait!

Once we had descended the very steep, winding forest path to the ground of the quarry, we got to climb in two sectors, changing between climbing and belaying, supervised by either Bengt or his girlfriend as the most experienced rope climbers among us. The slightly sloped route „Startrampe“ (rated 4) in Sector „Lehmriss“ (ger. „Starting ramp“ and „Clay crack“) on the eastern side of the quarry was a good start, even if we had the sun constantly frying the shirts off our backs. – The second sector we got to see is called „Muppetshow“ and the route we tried was accordingly named „Fozzie Bear“ (4+). Joke’s on us, though, because some of the footholds on this very popular route are really slippery, so beware! This route really showed who among us had either some chops, who showed talent or who used sheer iron will to get to the top. Fun either way! – After this effort, it was time to call it a night and rest up for another go at the same place the next day.

This time around, we were joined by an acquaintance of Bengt from his climbing course and the Watzmann travers he did that July. As he brought an extra rope, we were able to climb simultaneously in the smaller but also less crowded sector called „Drei Zinnen“ (ger. „three merlons“). There, we mostly climbed a super steep, yet heavily cracked wall on a 4+ route called „Marienkäfer“ (ger. „ladybug“) that offers two routes in one and also parts of the slightly trickier 5- route „Clara“ right next to it. Good fun and great routes for a first taste of rock. Worth mentioning, too: Bengt proved once again to be a good and surprisingly patient teacher (if, then, a less patient climber himself).

Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, Tuesday 27th – Wednesday 28th

After a day of rest with some city touring – lots of those in the Ruhr valley – it was time to climb AND for another change of gears: our next destination was a regionally well-known outdoor climbing center situated in the „Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord“ – Duisburg, mainly known for its steel industry and largest inland port of Europe, has little renown as a place of recreation (that’s coming from me who grew up in the neighbouring city). Nonetheless, pictures Bengt had shown me of this particular place had me very enthusiastic about climbing there, and I did not get disappointed: The landscape park around a former steel mill is already quite spectacular itself but the climbing area has more than 550 routes (grades 3-9!), a bouldering area plus a dry-tooling area and even a multi-part Via Ferrata bolted into the walls of the remnants of an old ore deposit.

Equipped with a print out of the local climbers‘ association guide to the eight (!) sectors, we spent the next two days exploring the oddly shaped and quite rough concrete walls that offer a surprising number of subtle or not-so-subtle features and intricacies. Also, as the sun burned down throughout our stay, some routes were only viable options in the morning, others in the afternoon. Still, waaaaay more than we could ever hope to climb then. The routes being mostly pretty short (10-12m), you get to try plenty which give some of them a rather „boulder-y“ feel. I had a few goes at lead climbing and even tried some harder routes where and if we could install a top-rope. What’s more, I found it especially enjoyable to coach one another on figuring out how to climb the same routes in different ways until each and every one of us found a fitting solution. – For lunch breaks, there’s a choice between a moderately priced theatre bistro and a more modest food stall with benches in the shadow of the steel mill towers. Scenic and quite the impressive ambience.

Bengt, as usual, climbed the most but when even his endurance started to falter, we finished things off with a joint traverse of the 45-minute Via Ferrata-circuit there. That proved to be quite demanding, to be honest, but it was a good little throwback to the trip in Austria in July and even offered a nice round-view of the area. So all in all, a trip well worth the ten Euros entrance fee the german climbers‘ association DAV is going to collect from you for spending the entire day there and a destination I’d heartily recommend for anyone at all into climbing. Thanks to Horst of the DAV who has bolted most of the routes there!