How Highball Urban Bouldering In Denmark Is Part Of History

Hi. The weather here in Copenhagen is very good today, so as the climbing gyms are still closed, we want to go and explore by doing some urban climbing. It is safe to say Denmark is not known for being a climbing destination. But on the other hand, the country is known for its pleasant public spaces and urban infrastructures. No rocks, but welcoming streets. This is the perfect combination for a bit of urban climbing. The walls of Copenhagen started to be climbed in the mid-80s by a few members of the Danish Mountain Club. And one of the first urban climbing spots was on the side of the central station. This is almost like old school Fontainebleau. I should have puff also. I started climbing 40 years ago, more or less to the date, 1980. And Danish Mountain Club was a mountain club aiming its members for going to the Alps for mountaineering. And for training for that mountaineering, the members went to Kullaberg in Sweden. But then we realized that climbing is not always the best training for climbing, not efficiently. So we wanted to do more doing pull-ups at home or gymnastics. And then looking around town, are there some places we can do something to become better climbers? Dry, dry, wet. I cannot even remember where I started. Oh yeah, now I know. You can start with a hand jam here. A friend of mine, out in some part of Copenhagen, scraped out between the bricks, the mortar, and used that for holes and had some quite long reaches, special moves on a brick wall. And we were very few who went there. And it was good training. I used it a lot, but it was kind of a secret to go there. There were only like two or three people coming there. And then we realized also if there's kind of natural rock, you know, granite bridges. And then there was this sandstone wall here at the main station. I think I found that in the spring of 1988 and started going back and forth and it spread. And we were quite a lot, maybe 10, 15 people coming every now and then. I traverse. I find it quite difficult now. I don't know what the grade is. If it's a sport grade, maybe 7A or something. And then to put it all together, it took some time again to realize it. I don't like, I don't really understand people do these things because I think that's, well, that's part of the game to find it and re-find it and remember it. But anyway, to find the footsteps is a little bit difficult. I think my record back then was going to the end three times and climbing in six times without jumping down. Not anymore. Bloody hell. I'm losing this one. I really became strong then. Every second day going down here and going back and forth, I really was crimp strong back then. One of the good thing about this type of climbing is that it really takes the skin. Ah, I think I forgot something here. And that's good training for these granite crimps when we go to Sweden. I think most of the climbing walls, they have kind of jock or steep climbing and granite climbing is not very steep. It's crimpy. So it's good for the skin. This move I haven't been doing for 30 years and immediately I remembered how to cross my hands and get down to this one. Some of the others I forgot, but this one I had immediately. And this pinch over here. Suddenly more and more bikes was parked there. I had to move the bikes when I wanted to train. There was even, you know, bike stand, but I knew all the moves so I could climb over the bikes or over the bike stand still. And then the indoor climbing wall slowly started to appear and then it just simply ran out of fashion. During lockdown, we started looking around. The climbing walls of course was closed down. The border to Sweden was closed. So we were looking around scratching our heads. And of course I knew some of these places. Some of the places there's a granite wall, which has been used even when everything was open because it had some qualities, you know, midweek thing or crimps, which are hard to find on a climbing wall. This wall is Kastelplan, first climbed in 1995. With a topo describing around 30 problems, it is still regularly climbed due to its quality and its nice location close to the Little Mermaid of Copenhagen. Okay, so we've just biked here to this bridge in hope that we could do some urban climbing here. But as you can see, it's under reconstruction or something. So we'll have to find some wells to go. Oh well. Climbing on public structures like walls, bridges, or even some statues is legal in Denmark, even though it is not too popular. But during the confinement with climbing gyms being closed, the Danes had to be created to continue climbing. And some urban cracks were discovered like this one. We have arrived here at the train bridges at Hillerup station. And as you can see, there is a lot of climbing to do. I'm standing right here with the topper, so at least we have something to begin with. But I guess we'll try to find new projects here ourselves as well. Railway bridges with granite blocks provide the best cracks of the area. While being sometimes a bit slippery due to a thick layer of graffitis, it is very possible to find some good lines. The level is quite hard on these vertical crimpy faces, very different to what you generally find indoor, and a bit of perseverance is therefore needed. There is no record of this site in Hillerup being climbed before May 2020. But thanks to the lockdown, walls that are usually passed by have turned into climbing possibilities. Quickly, a topple has been made and released with eight boulders graded from 5 to 6C. We encountered the creator of this topple in another spot near Gentofte Lake, where he was already working on another project. My name is Rasmus. I've come here to do some bouldering during the corona time. Usually I climb at the Nørrebro Kladderklub, always bouldering, sometimes outdoor in Sweden. This is a climbing spot in Gentofte, just north of Gentofte Sø. It's two walls under a railway bridge, and in fact there's a lot of cars, but still I think the spot is quite good. The walls are about five meters high, and the style is mostly crimps. I've been driving by this place for years, and only recently I thought that it could be a good climbing spot. So I found this place on a website called kladdersteder.dk, but unfortunately the topple was gone, it was lost, so I decided to start to make a new one. Yeah, so? That hole and the two holes there, the small pocket, and then go far up. Get a good hold, good crimp, and then a jump, and then to the top. And it's just a straight line, so it's what we're looking for. I think we're ready. It is already the third spot that Rasmus is working on. Available on a website, the topples are pretty elaborate, combining pictures and videos. So usually the process is to pick a line that looks good, and we try it a couple of times, and if it works out, we start filming them. The grade is about from five to six C, and maybe six B+, so it's in the easy part of the scale. But there are some projects, for example the traverse, that might be quite hard. The topples are not easy to find if you don't speak Danish, and if you're not a member of the Facebook groups of the local community, the group of Nørrebro Kladderklub being the most active. The biggest climbing database of the country can be found on kladdersteder.dk, an old website created in 2001 by a member of the community. Despite the lack of contributors and some outdated information, it is still more exhaustive than modern climbing application when it comes to Denmark. People really got their eyes open for this place when the corona spread and all the gyms were closed. What I hope now is that more people discover the place and come and do some climbing here, because it's pretty nice. People could get together and try the same lines and see what they thought and how hard the lines would be. So yeah, that could be pretty nice. Suddenly we realized that a lot of meeting people out here, and we arranged for meeting in different places and went there again. Some of the granite bridges are hugely popular now, and you can see chalk marks all over the places. With the lockdown, urban climbing has found a revival in spring 2020. Is a new community going to rise, gathering indoor climbers who meet at the bottom of the crags? Good resting point. Will these rediscovered spots still be frequented after the reopening of the gyms? Future will tell, but we can hope. Yesterday was the end of climbers lockdown as the gyms opened again. Today, however, we wanted to take a look at Kastelhorn, and guess what? It is open as well. There was this brick wall at the university, I think maybe five meters tall, just climb back and forth and up and down. And somebody realized, ah, go a little bit higher, you know, not falling down, and put a kind of a glued sticker thing, colored tape, on the wall at the high point. And it moved a little bit higher, there was a new color the next day, a little bit higher, until one of my friends, really good skinny and headstrong my friends, he put a sticker up all the way at the roof, five meters up. Nobody dared to take it down again or do anything. It was simply too high for me, absolutely too scared to fall down on the concrete.