Rocklands 2012 I - Cockaigne A few liters of water went down the Pegnitz (a small river in the Frankenjura) since I came back from my trip to the Rocklands during August 2012. For me it´s the best time to write about my memories from the Pakhuis Pass, the Teagarden, the Fields Of Joy, 8 Days Rain and ........ . I can´t remember a autumn season in my whole climbers life which was as bad as this one. No! It´s even not worth to call it autumn season because of there was simply no autumn! At the beginning I´ve had a glimmer of motivation to stray through the forest and get some unfinished businesses done. Wrong! On every single problem I´ve got one day! Not more and not less. Sometimes this is it! This is Frankenjura and it´s hard to stay in shape or keep the motivation on a necessarily high level. There are many places and boulders you´ll not become another chance, sometimes for a year. That´s the reason why it´s the right moment to write something about the Rockland right now. To overcome these days... until next year in August. The last year I´ve left three problems undone which where on the very top of my wishlist for 2012: Golden Shadow, Madiba and Mooise Meisie. Each of them I´ve already tried more or less intense. My trip in 2011 ended with checking out the moves of Golden Shadow and I was obsessed from the first move I did. Imagine you stand in front of a orange-golden 50° wall made of perfect solid sandstone. The features are just incredible! Amazing pinches and crimps which go together in an aesthetic way. For god saken the-re is a huge foot lock which is also the slightly painful starting hold. I´ve got no idea how hard it would be without it. The climb itself is a mixture between fingerpower and bo-dypower especially for the shoulders and the upper body. After maybe 2 hours of trying I had a solid beta for nearly all of the moves and thought that it´s a real shame to try it on my last day. Otherwise you´ve got something to looking forward to. But lets start from the beginning! As we arrived, the Rocklands were as beautiful as I kept in mind. I´eve got no idea how some people can say that this area is not good! Yeah it´s right, the area is not good! The area is incredible good. So it´s the second time for me and everything was easier. 2011 I nearly climbed in every area, therefore I had not to search for the accesses and the boulders. I also did tons of the problems between 7c and 8b the last time, that means I had nearly 4 weeks to focus on Golden Shadow. As usual I tried to start with a few "easier" problems to get used to the climbing which is totally different from Frankenjura. I started with "When The Day Breakes (Sitdown), Dirty Epic, Golden Virginia and Shallow Cave", a few really interesting and high quality 7c+ and 8a´s. Especially Shallow Cave is much better than it looks. Weird foot hooks and a po-werfull undercling sections offer a varied problem. I felt ready to say hallo to my old fellow. A friend of mine, Fabi, also tried it at the moment and with a third member in the Golden Shadow team (my mate Manu) the spirit was high. Things worked pretty well. It felt like i´ve never been at home for a year. Fabi found a sequence for the first part which also worked really well for me, but somehow I wasn't´t able to get a crucial hold at the right place. It´s strange! You don´t realise if you got it good or not until you climb further and if you got it wrong you´re in a dead-end road. It´s the forth day on the problem and there it is, the knowledge how to grab the hold from the start. The conditions were per-fect and Fabi (Buhl) did the problem just 1 hour ago. My motivation was very high and I came very close, unfortunately my feet swung out to much and I hit the rock in my back. Damn it! 30 minutes later a dream became true and the moment came I waited on one year. There are two weeks left and I´m already happy... Keep an eye out for Rocklands II  

Dirty Epic

  Food Fiesta!     Golden Shadow  

Shallow Cave