ALTER TRAUM

ABOUT THE UNCONQUERABLE CASTLE

Prague was no longer safe. So in 1420, church dignitaries transported part of the St. Vitus treasure to the sandstone castle of Ojvín—where Charles IV used to go to his vacation residence—to protect it from Hussite raids. It later turned out that their tactical maneuver had paid off—the valuables, which they had hidden in the underground chambers beneath the chapel, remained safe there. The castle withstood two major raids, and the treasure remained there until 1562, when the Jesuits moved it back to Prague.

Today, the place is called Oybin; it lies on German territory and hides yet another treasure: the oldest sandstone route with a grade Xa (7c+ fr. approx.). Just walk over to the east side of the castle, and you’ll see a roughly 50-meter-long wall with an unusual shape. It looks like a cast of a rippling sea surface (complete with bubbles) that someone erected and propped up against the side of an impregnable table mountain.

This is where the fairy tale was originally supposed to end, but it actually continues: The first ascender, Werner “Schöni” Schönlebe—about whom you’ll read more below—invested a great deal of his time in this wall, especially in 1981. From the summer onward, he spent every spare moment on the steep, vertical face of the Nordwestlicher Zwilling tower; reportedly, it took him an entire day of climbing just to place a thin sling into a crack from his climbing position so he could drill the fourth ring-bolt. When he completed his work on November 1, the route Alter Traum (Old Dream) was born, which Schöni modestly rated IXb.

It soon became clear, however, that this grade was a sandbag—the first repeaters agreed on a difficulty of Xa, RP Xb. (Alter Traum thus surpassed Bernd Arnold’s 1982 route Schallmauer as the oldest Xa, author’s note.) And it also eluded Czech climbers for a long time… We know, for example, of an attempt by Jindra “Hudy” Hudeček and Jörn Beilke. “We climbed AF-style to the fourth ring-bolt (out of seven, author’s note) and then rappelled down. We also wanted to check out the adjacent Trilogie Xb that day; we almost had it figured out, but we didn’t have the skin left for RP attempts,” recalls Jörn. Another climber, Ondra “Plagát” Sojka, also reached the fourth ring in 2018, but he got stuck on the route, so the wall held out once again. “It was already winter, and we’d run out of willpower.”

So we set a goal at the editorial office to document a Czech ascent and to nominate someone for this historic route. The first documented climber to attempt it was Sam Maštálko, who got stuck at the third ring in 2019. Three years later, we returned to the site with Honza Kendík—another attempt, and once again, a fall at the third, cursed ring. It already looked like we were going to give up on this idea, but we decided to give it one last shot. In 2024, we roped Honza Vopat into the route, thanks to whom we can publish the following video with the label: “Climbed.” Admittedly, it was an “AF-style” ascent, but a successful one. Good triumphed over evil. Will Honza ever return for an RP? You’ll find it out in our video…

Back in 2022, we announced on the eMontana website that we were going for the first Czech repeat… Martin “Magnusek” Klonfar later admitted to us that this motivated him to head out and check out Alter Traum as well. And anyone who knows Magnusek won’t be surprised that he was the one who ultimately made the first Czech ascent. How did it go? We asked him for a report:

AN UNEXPECTEDLY INTENSE REWARD

Martin „Magnusek“ Klonfar

It wasn’t until I came across eMontana’s search for a Czech ascent a few years ago that I realized I needed to try Alter Traum; until then, I had considered Schallmauer in Rathen to be Saxony’s first Xaa. Last fall, I went climbing with Vojta Přibyl, and since he needed to be back in Liberec early, I suggested a tempting destination in Oybin. Or rather, I probably kind of forced it on him—maybe he’d have preferred to rest in his knee somewhere else… But given the direction and strength of the wind, it was the only place that day where we could climb without messing up our hair.

The weather was definitely challenging, but it’s a north face, and the supply of holds in the holes probably rarely dries up—so there was no point in getting distracted by thoughts of a redpoint. Fortunately, the boulder section from the third ring onward stays quite dry; it took me a while to figure it out, and then I climbed it several times in a row, because, surprisingly, the fun doesn’t end at the belt of holds below the fourth ring. You do have a bit of a handhold (the dirty green holds make a comeback here), but your feet are just smearing on a blank wall and the ring is high up. I could have reached the quickdraw, but I ended up having to jump after the ring—luckily, as a “classic” climber, I can afford to do that. And it definitely didn’t work on the first try. Then there are about two more difficult moves around the fourth ring leading into the crack. Stringing the whole thing together would have been a pretty hard goal for me even without the frog-like holds.

The crack looks like it’ll be the reward, but surprisingly, after the left-hand bend, the reward became unexpectedly intense—spiced up, moreover, by several meters from the ring where I couldn’t place any protextion. There just a few rotten old fixed slings–nothing to write home about. I think Vojta liked this part the most.

Fortunately, we’d already climbed Reginakante (VIIIa) before, so there were no further surprises once we got to the junction.

I can’t really imagine how the local “Handsome Guy” (Schöni) climbed it back in the Mesozoic Era with slippers on his feet. I guess he was just in a different league.

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In the gallery below, you’ll find photos from all three attempts that we documented over the course of six years. We’d also like to thank our assistant cameramen, Pepa Horák and Thomas Pöschmann, who accompanied us to the site.

BALANCE ON BEER BOTTLES

And what was this “Handsome” Schöni actually like? A young man from Thuringia (*1951), he was stationed in the 1970s at the barracks in Zittau—in other words, within striking distance of the sandstone towers of the Zittauer Gebirge. He spent his free time there, and when he couldn’t climb outdoors, he trained. He reportedly even set up various obstacle courses on the floor of the barracks.

He was one of the first climbers to take training systematically. He included walking on taut chains or ropes—training his balance at a time when slacklines didn’t yet exist. “For him, training was already more than just fun,” recalls Andy Stephan from Saxony, who was lucky enough to meet him a few times.

Jörn Beilke knew him a little better: “Together with him and other friends, I spent weeks at the Kirchlehnhütte in Krippen, Saxony. (In the 1980s, this hut was a central meeting place for climbers from the GDR who wanted to leave the country—author’s note.) We climbed a lot back then. Schöni also tried to improve his bread-baking skills, forage for medicinal plants, repair the stone walls around the house, and tinker with climbing harnesses… In other words, these few sentences aren’t enough to describe his personality. By the way, Schöni also traversed the winter ridge of the High Tatras with Michael Urbczat and wrote a book on training.”

In 1989, Schöni left Saxony and moved to Franconian Switzerland (Bavaria, author’s note), where he lived for some time with other climbers in a mill. “Schöni never fit into any social framework; he loved nature and his freedom. He enjoyed moving from place to place. Although he had a college education, he didn’t mind earning a living doing odd jobs so he could climb. Freedom was more important and more valuable to him,” summarizes Klaus Leupolt in his article for the DAV yearbook.

Schöni then often spent the last winters of his life in Spain, mostly near climbing areas. However, Schöni had almost completely given up climbing itself. His motto was: “If I can’t climb at the top level anymore, I’d rather not climb at all.” Over time, he withdrew almost completely into seclusion, and very few people remained in contact with him. “I, too, remember him as taciturn and solitary. In the winters, he would head south in search of warmth and live there the whole time in his car with just his dog,” recalls Andy Stephan.

From that period of his life when he was at the peak of his strength, Schöni left behind even more routes. In addition to Alter Traum, he also climbed the aforementioned Trilogy, which is an even bigger challenge than the route we filmed. It’s located on the same wall a few steps to the right, has very few ascents, is sometimes rated Xb/c AF, and has yet to be RP-climbed.

If you want to get a feel for his style in a slightly more approachable way, you can try, for example, the famous ârete called Pferdefuss Xa, RP Xc on the Teufelsturm in Saxony. Lots of rings, a beautiful line… It’s a safe route, but it hasn’t attracted many Czech RP ascents either. On the legendary west face of the Meurerturm, Schöni also has his own signature route: Zwischenspiel ! VIIIc, RP IXa, which he climbed with his main climbing partner, Steffen Ott from Waltersdorf in the Zittau Mountains. (By the way, Steffen climbed Alter Traum five times and stopped signing the logbook after that—author’s note.)

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to interview Schöni in person for the video—he passed away in 2023, and a small plaque near the start of the Alter Traum route commemorates him.

A MEMORY OF HONZA VOPAT
“It was a beautiful, cool, sunny autumn day when Honza Kendík, Standa, and I stood beneath a shaded wall, down the center of which ran the Alter Traum route. As far as the eye could see—about 18 meters—it was well-bolted; there was no risk of hitting the ground or taking a brutal fall… But I didn’t know that the part you couldn’t see was three times higher and had significantly fewer bolts than the start. It is in this upper section that, at least for me, the main part of the show takes place. The entire route thoroughly tests a climber’s skills and quickly reveals their weaknesses—except, perhaps, for brute strength, which is only useful on overhangs.”

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Thank you to everyone who contributed to the eMontana editorial team in 2026, thereby supporting the creation of not only this video. You’ll find information about us here.

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