The Southern Colorado Andersons (that’s Mike, Janelle, Lucas and Axel) are finally on our way to Europe!

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S EUROPEAN VACATION, Jason Lively, Dana Hill, Beverly D’Angelo, Chevy Chase, 1985

We are flying into Frankfurt, Germany, then heading south to the Alps.  We’ll be staying in Ellmau, a quaint ski village in the heart of the Tirol region. We hope to sample Austria’s incredible rock…specifically the limestone and granite.

This is our shortlist of Austrian crags we want to visit:

• Schleier Wasserfall
• Steinplatte
• Paradies
• Edelweisswand
• Sparchen
• Bergstation
• Neiderthai
• Gotterwandl
• Ginzling
• Sonnendeck

I know…the list is too long!

If you know these areas, please give us your route recommendations. We’ll be psyched to try any great routes from 7a to 8c!

When I planned the trip, I was dreaming of limestone, but as I’ve done more research, I’ve become more and more intrigued by the granite, which looks spectacular. Especially Bergstation and Nederthai. I love limestone, but it turns out that my hardest ascents have all been on granite, so I seem to have an affiinity for it. I’m looking forward to trying world-class routes like 5 Sterne, Le Miracle, and Elements of Addiction.

5 Sterne, 7c+ at Bergstation, Austria

If you’re a fan of the Rock Climber’s Training Manual, or a fan of our website, we would love to meet you out at the crag!

We will be posting updates of our climbing and our plans through our new Instagram  account (see the feed on the right side of this page), so check that to see ourplans. Our instagram name is:

@rock_climbers_training_manual

If you’re not into Instagram, just e-mail me at: rockclimberstrainingmanual_at_gmail_dot_com. I’ll let you know our plans, or we can arrange to meet at a crag.

During our trip, we also intend to make shorter visits to the Italian Dolomites. We hope to do some longer alpine routes as a family, and try some via ferrata. We’ll probably check out some Italian sport climbing as well.

We will be in Austria until July 10th, then we’ll drive to the Netherlands to present our latest research on the Trango, Rock Prodigy Forge hangboard at “The Engineering of Sport 11”, the 11th congress of the International Sports Engineering Association. The Forge has been really well received by those that have tried it and contributed to our survey, and we look forward to sharing those results with the international sports engineering community!

Wish us luck, and we hope to hear from you soon, or see you at the crags!