"THE MASTERS" OF ELBE VALLEY

89 MASTERS

The year of tuning is over. In December 2023 at Czech version of eMontana we published the working/nomination list of Elbe Valley Masters and also a call for climbers to comment on it. The idea was to create a list of the greatest classic challenges that had been created in the Elbe Valley up to 1986. The list should act as a reminder of this era and also as a motivation for those who like classic climbing with a touch of adventure. Nowadays, most of the climbers in Elbe Valley pass by these routes and gradually forget about them. The number of those who remember the era when these routes were the biggest challenges is dwindling.

Around 25 climbers took part in the selection of the Masters and a large voting chart was created. We were happy to see that the climbers who created routes in Elbe Valley at that time also shared their opinions – for example Mirek Michlík, Jirka Janiš, “Prcas” Slavík, “Piskoř” Houser, Vašek Širl, Bernd Arnold, Mirek Štross or Heinz Skopec. The authors of the Labák guidebook, Jirka Chocholoušek and Vláďa Nehasil, also helped a lot. After everyone put their heads together and the votes were counted, the list of 60 Right Bank Masters and 29 Left Bank Masters was finally created.

Just be careful, these are definitely not routes that one should casually recommend to their friends. Nor is it a selection of the best classics here… In fact, the Masters are the opposite: they very often present bold lines and choose the most serious challenges from the time when the strictest rules for drilling rings reigned in the Elbe Valley (only from a clean position, note by the author) – so the rings are often not where one wants to click them, but where they were able to place them. Or missing altogether.

So it pays for a potential adept to think carefully about his motivation and assess his current shape and boldness before embarking on any journey. There are a few doable paths on the list (relative to the others), but there aren’t that many. It’s a pretty tough selection, and includes some downright dangerous extremes… But there might be a few takers. Those who are looking for a relaxing days on sandstones can use it as a tip on which routes to avoid.

KNOTS AND RINGS

Rings are usually few in these routes. As we wrote in last year’s article, many climbs assume a good ability to handle with slings. If one knows how to protect with them, some of the routes that are intimidating at first glance can be protected very well indeed. But this is by no means true for all of the lines listed.

As a reminder that knots are just pieces of textile, a photographically documented incident from the „Přímá cesta holubiček“, in which Míla Pletánek gradually zipped out all the knots in a fall and fell to the ground, may serve as a reminder. If you have a good handle on it, good knots can be placed in this route, but in a slightly overhanging layback it takes a lot of strength and the climber may not have the necessary calm and endurance to put them. Compared to the days of the first ascents, however, we now have undeniable advantages: there are good quality slings of various diameters, starting with those of five or six millimetres, which climbers did not have before, or at least not with sufficient strength.

We should probably also point out the classification specifics of the routes on the list. Among the routes are the classic VIIb (rather rarely) and VIIc from the days of closed classification, a lot of VIIIs and some IXs alongside them. Especially for the lower numbers on the list it is worth approaching the classification with caution. Ratings often tend to be somewhat stiffer compared to the current popular routes, which can make for a tricky mix when combined with poorer security.

LIKE THE OLD MASTERS

At the end of the year in neighbouring Germany, Uwe Daniel completed his photographic project after many years, in which he tried to document all the Saxon Meisterwegs – the routes from a list that was created 50 years ago. He has succeeded in publishing a book and has also prepared a new website Sandsteinmeister.de. There you will find four new lists for four performance classes, the hardest one prepared by Robert Leistner. It seems that the new selections are all about star and recommendable climbs. They are such current standards for all difficulty levels. The very bold and dangerous routes are marginally represented and this is usually indicated in the comments that the authors of the lists attach to the routes. Only some of the routes in Robert Leistner’s list carry the “M” designation next to the classification, roughly from classification level XIb onwards.

Our Elbe Valley list is rather close to the original Meisterweg list. It focuses on older climbs in which psychological difficulty played a significant part in the difficulty, and therefore concentrates bold, sometimes X‑routes, and also includes climbs that might deserve an exclamation point but don’t have one… Prudence is advisable.

As a final landmark, we have decided to set the year 1986. That’s when the first Xs started to be made and a generational change was slowly taking place. Zdeněk Weingartl was already living in emigration, his brother Pavel had stopped climbing and the era of the then chairman of the top committee Zdeněk Kropáček, who was a great advocate of setting rings from a clean position, was coming to an end.

Among the Masters of Elbe Valley we did not include these routes, which by the way are also connected with the Weingartl brothers: Antická hrana, Přímá hrana bouří, Pravý výlom and Světelný rok. In their original form, they would certainly have belonged in the selection, but after they were finished they lost their original moral complexity and their character changed.

The Weingartl brothers clearly dominate the list in terms of authorship – they are signed to 40 routes and often made them together. The second position by a wide margin was occupied by Rudolf Zabilka (12 routes), whose climbing and first ascent career was unfortunately soon ended by an untimely death. The author of eight routes in the list is Mirek Michlík; five routes are in the list of K. Bělina, F. Záběhlík and M. Mikyška; four routes by L. Černý, three routes by J. Šimon and V. Širl. Two trips each for J. Houser, M. Krauskopf and J. Hudeček. More than 20 other climbers have one route each. This is not a competition, of course, but the numbers show which personalities have fundamentally pushed classical climbing in Elbe Valley from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

In this article, in addition to the list, we have decided to publish some of the stories and memories that came to our editorial office during this year’s work on the project… Thanks to Jirka Chára we managed to get an interview with Zdeněk Weingartl, part of which we are exceptionally adopting. It was published in CAO News in November 2003, Zdeněk Weingartl died in Canada in 2012.

ZDENĚK WEINGARTL:
A MENTAL PASSION FOR CLIMBING

Interview by Veronika Schumi Krčilová,
originally in CAO News, November 2003,
below selection with minimal editorial changes.

Your routes are notorious for not having many repeats. Would you agree to add some protection to them?
Depends which one. Of course, we didn’t make those routes so no one would climb after us. We did them because we reckoned that if we had climbed the routes of others, like Karel Krombholz and others, that our routes would climb over like everyone else’s. And at that time it was not thought that…

That somebody would add protection in the future?
Well, there was a tendency to add rings then. But the attitude to life and climbing was very different then than it is now. The development was slower, but I think there was a lot more of that intellectual fervor. Because there was a risk of a dangerous fall. I had to say to myself – if I can’t do it today, I’ll come back tomorrow. I’m going to try it every day, because one day, maybe in a month, I have to be in the mood to finish this route. Because of course when someone, let’s say, walks on a rope without protection, it’s a different thing than when they have that protection underneath them. And that’s the big difference. Nowadays you can say that with these new routes it’s almost the same whether someone has a rope from the top or a rope behind them.

Do you think it was more of an emotional thing than it is today?
Far more! I think climbing today is more of a sport. Back then it was something more.

For fun?
No, back then it was a way of life…

(…)

When we talk about sandstone areas, which one comes to your mind?
I have fond memories of all kinds of areas, every area has something. Of the sandstone ones, definitely the Elbe Valley. The sandstone there is hard and quite compact. Just enough to make nice routes, climb nice and hard lines. And then of course Adršpach and Elbsandstein. Bernd Arnold made a bunch of routes there, which he knew how to do, and it was a pleasure to climb them. It was such a rivalry how much of it we could climb. Which we more or less managed.

Was it too competitive?
Yeah. It got to be competitive. It was a kind of furiosity, rivalry, healthy sporting competition. And it was beautiful. We had a great time doing it.

Zdeněk Weingartl: „With these new routes it’s almost the same whether someone has a rope from the top or a rope behind them.“

What do you consider your most valuable output?
Including Germany?

Including Germany.
Probably the Direkt Superlativ. (Direkte Superlative IXc, RP Xa, 7c by Bernd Arnold on the Grosser Wehlturm in Rathen, author’s note). Later on there were harder routes that we climbed with Jindra (Hudeček, note by the author), and then he did some of the climbing. There were also climbs on the Elbe Virgin (Ladies’ Gambit IXb, 7a+, and Touch of Love IXa, 7a, editor’s note) and then the Mirror (Light Year IXb, RP IXc, 7b+, author’s note), which we didn’t manage to finish at that time. But I think that at that time climbing or mountaineering was much more demanding on the psyche. So you needed to be prepared not only physically, but also mentally, and that was demanding. Because after a while you were mentally tired. You just didn’t want to go to the edge of your limits. Nobody could go to the very edge of their limits for very long. Because every fall meant an injury. A serious injury.

You ever fall?
Not very often, but occasionally. Where I couldn’t afford to fall, I didn’t fall. I’d go where I could be sure of it or where I could afford it. Well, where I couldn’t afford to, I didn’t. And so I’m still here. (laughs) Because you had to evaluate not only what you could afford, but what the day was like, what the weather was like, how you felt, and what the trip was like. And it was always better to go back five times than to really risk it all.

Of course, nowadays more time is spent climbing, but we were climbing too. Basically, you were climbing with the preponderance, because you couldn’t climb at your limit all the time. You could climb once. Everybody touched his limit, everybody made a mistake. The important thing was that the mistake wasn’t fatal.

Which was your life mate?
My brother. Definitely my brother. There’s other names and many names, but my brother was a long-time thing and he was kind of… Well, when we were climbing, it wasn’t about being ambitious. We believed that climbing should be at a sporting level too. Because we told ourselves that we wanted to live our life the way it was supposed to be lived, and not some lies and deceit and corruption. So we created our own world together and it was a nice world. It was a microcosm. Well, it wasn’t just the two of us, of course, there were more of us.

And then you had to keep the rules. So we climbed harder and harder and harder and that’s what we did.

Did you have any favourite climbers, models?
We had role models, of course. Karel Krombholz, for example. Or Dietrich Hasse, Emanuel Strubich. Well, and then Bernd Arnold, who basically took climbing to a higher sphere, a few steps further. Those routes of his were not climbed at all for a certain period of time because people had great respect for them. They just weren’t climbed. And you could say that the Germans in general at that time were several classes ahead of climbing in our country. We started to get closer to that, and then others did. For example, Joščík Hradecký, Luděk Šlechta or Honza Šimon, who killed himself. We used to go to Germany a lot and we caught up with the German top in a few years.

Zdeněk Weingartl: „It was always better to go back five times than to really risk it all.“

WISHES FOR THE END

Although the routes from the Elbe Valley Masters list may look like horrors, you can choose another point of view… On a modern RP route, success is viewed quite strictly: you climb fifty metres, then you miss it once and you can start again — for example, the top boulder in Velký Třesk Xa, 7c. Or somewhere you can’t finish a crux sequence because of getting pumped. It’s an “RP or nothing” game.

On the other hand, everything counts on classic routes – downclimbing back down to the ground, bailing the route, team AF, using combined tactics… It’s all about collecting experience and experiencing it with your rope partners. The physical component of the performance doesn’t play a major role, it’s more of a learning expedition into space-time and climbing history. Opportunities to get up close and personal with climbing legends and their times.

On behalf of the eMontana team, we wish good luck to those who occasionally make climbing in Elbe Valley more interesting by climbing something from the new list. And to those who consciously decide to complete this thing, then steady nerves and enough patience.

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