Guided climbing tours & courses with a Swiss mountain guide

Common forms of climbing are sport climbing indoors or on rocks, alpine climbing or multi-pitch climbing and bouldering. Special forms of climbing are ice climbing, deep water soloing and the increasingly popular variant of via ferrata. Extreme forms of climbing are free solo climbing, speed climbing, big wall climbing and mixed climbing.

You will find a nice description of the different forms of play in here.

Trad Climbing (Traditional Climbing), or Clean Climbing, is a purist type of climbing. It does without artificial and permanent fixed points such as bolts. The routes are secured traditionally, i.e. with friends (clamping devices), wedges and, if necessary, pitons. One must Cover yourself. Granite and gneiss with its beautiful parallel cracks are particularly suitable for trad climbing. Well-known places for trad climbing are the Dolomites in South Tyrol, Great Britain and especially America with the "Nose". You will learn how to belay yourself, place friends correctly and learn placements for the different belay devices in our climbing courses and tours!

Sport climbing is climbing with a rope on well-established routes. Sport climbing routes have only one rope length, so they are 15-40m high. This can be done outdoors and indoors in all the new climbing gyms.

Free Solo Climbing is very well known from the film "Free solo" with Alex Honold. The belay points and the rope are completely dispensed with. One mistake leads to certain death. Only very few climbers do this extreme form. Free climbing is not to be confused with free solo. Free climbing simply means climbing with pure muscle power and what the rock offers us. In addition, when free climbing, you are secured with a rope. You do not use the rope or other aids to climb the wall or the route. The rope is merely the reinsurance. Aid climbing or artif climbing (artificiel) is completely different. Technical climbing. There you use rope ladders, squats and much more to somehow get up the wall. Often the difficulties of the wall are too high to climb, at least for ordinary mortals.

Strictly speaking, bouldering is a form of climbing. Namely, that on blocks at jumping height, typically a few metres high. However, climbing is often used as rope climbing, i.e. sport climbing, and bouldering, the playful climbing on blocks.

Since bouldering involves climbing without a rope at jump height, the risk of sprained ankles and the like is relatively high. Of course, in some cases "jump height" is a very elastic term, and highballs were created. In other words, fairly high boulders on which you should definitely not fall any more. But this is again the extreme form. In normal bouldering, to avoid stupid falls, you use mats that you bring yourself and spot each other so that you can land in the right position. The spotters do not catch the falling person, but prevent the impact on the back or head. More to mock can be found here.

There are numerous forms of movement and techniques to get up a rock face like this. It is crucial to get to know your body and, with a lot of practice, to automate the different forms, to recognise the required technique in the respective places and to be able to call it up. It is a large repertoire of movements that you have to acquire. We teach you the different techniques in our courses with suitable exercises. Here you will find the Principles and a very Detailed list of climbing techniques.

Efficiently climb out of the legs. Place the feet precisely on the toes so that you can lift most of the pull from the legs. The feet should be under the body's centre of gravity during the pull and after the pull, in the pause, apart so that the body's centre of gravity is between the feet. Try to hang on the wall with your arms stretched out as long as possible. This will save you strength. Only pull with the arm where necessary. Try to load crosswise, i.e. when the left arm pulls, the right foot should push. Otherwise you will have an "open door" and you will turn out. You can stop this rotation with the "flag".

You should definitely learn how to turn in as early as possible in your climbing career.

Exes (also express slings, expresses) are two snap carabiners sewn to a webbing sling and are needed for belaying while climbing (more about exes). Often you need 10 to 14 pitons for one rope length. Each route is different in length and has a different number of pitons. The climbing guides describe how many pitons you need for each route.

In rock climbing, i.e. sport climbing on the rock, you choose walls that are typically 15 to 40 m high, on which you can get up with one rope length. These are often very well equipped, i.e. they have bolts on which you attach the express slings yourself. In contrast to indoor climbing, you need more equipment. In addition to the longer rope than in the hall, you need express slings and self-belaying slings to thread the rope at the belaystation.

In alpine climbing and multi-pitch climbing, the goal is to climb an entire wall or to reach a summit via the wall. So you don't climb just one pitch, as in sport climbing, but hang many pitches together to form a multi-pitch tour. To do this safely, you set up a solid belaystation after each pitch. The second person climbs after and then continues with the next pitch. In this way, you climb the wall as a rope team from belaystation to belaystation. For the descent you have to abseil some of the way down. A multi-pitch tour like this can also be done in the high mountains, as part of a Alpine Tour, far above the glacier.

The first person in a rope team must climb in the lead. This means that the rope is not yet hooked in and the lead climber(s) hooks the rope into the respective intermediate belays, into the express slings during the climb. One person is required to climb the lead both indoors and outdoors on the rock.

Toprope is climbing on a rope that is already hooked in. The rope therefore always comes from above, i.e. from the top, and you therefore do not have to climb in the lead. In the toprope you are well secured and you cannot fall. When climbing multiple pitches, the person in the second ascent also has the rope from above and climbs the respective pitch in the second ascent also in the toprope. If the same person always climbs a multi-pitch, the second person is always secured with the rope from above.

For sport climbing you need climbing fins, a nice long rope, express slings, harness, belay device and a helmet. That's all you really need. Something delicious to eat, enough water and a bialetti or a hammock for cosiness and you'll have a great day on the rock. You will find details here.

The best training for climbing is the climbing itself. You need to enjoy the movement and have the curiosity to solve new problems. Supplementary strength training, mega tight climbing fins and excessive taping of fingers may look crass, but only really brings something in the very high climbing grades (from 8a). You should therefore enjoy the sport as much as possible. The best way is to use a Technical trainings to strengthen the awareness for the movements and then to go climbing actively, i.e. always with the technique inputs in mind, and to implement them actively. You can find an exciting article here. Also useful is the book "Vertical Secrets" by Peter Keller and "9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistakes" by Dave MacLeod. It also helps to simply observe other climbers and analyse their movements. It is exciting to analyse the professionals on YouTube.

To get to a level of 7a, it is enough to climb regularly once a week. If you want to achieve more and you are completely hooked, 2-3 climbing sessions per week are a good order of magnitude. Make sure to vary the training sessions, so bouldering one time and rope climbing the next.

One should start with the foot technique, with precise standing. This is the most important thing. The movement must come from the legs. After that, it makes sense to start in a Climbing technique training to learn the different forms of movement. Only from the high grades onwards do specific finger strength and maximum strength exercises make sense.

There are numerous, beautiful, spectacularly located and good-grip climbing areas. Many are described in climbing guides and there are also numerous "secret" spots that are only passed on by word of mouth. Popular regions and places are:

• the classics from Jura,
• the limestone cliffs of Näfels, Glarus and Weesen,
• the long limestone walls near the Säntis,
• the Bergell in the Engadine,
• the granite from the Gotthard, Uri, Furka,
• the sport climbing areas of Engelberg, Pilatus, Melchsee-Frutt and
• the granites from the Valais near Zermatt, Saas Fee and
• especially the Martigny region.
• Not forgetting the granites of Chamonix, which also extend into Switzerland, into the Trent region.

Literature can be found at the Filidor, on Rock climbing, at the SAC and in various Portals.

Worthwhile climbing tours with a mountain guide is, for example, the "Chico Mendez" Zuestoll (~6b). Alpine approach, magnificent view of Lake Walen and a beautiful summit. Also very rewarding and somewhat easy, but all the longer for it, is the traverse of the Kreuzberge in the Säntis Massif (max. V, often easier). Breezy, alpine and a magnificent landscape reward you. The routes on the Salbit or Furka with their super granite (from 5b) can also be highlighted here. However, the tours in the Trient area are still a highlight. Beautiful red granite high above the sea of glaciers. A must for all nature lovers, available in all difficulty levels. You are always welcome to contact us with your wishes, our mountain guides are sure to find the right route for you, or take a look in the Climbing offer, current dr blau Chäfer in the Melchsee Frutt - a gigantic tour with lots of low views!

There are some low-lying, fully south-exposed rocks where you can climb well even in winter. For example

• Ponte Brolla in Ticino,
• Harder near Interlaken
• or, more simply, the fiefdom.
• The rocks at the Klus near Balsthal in the Jura are also pretty.

Outside Switzerland, the following countries and regions are very popular for climbing holidays:

• France (Corsica with its tafoni),
• Italy (Finale, Sardinia, Tuscany),
• Croatia,
• Spain (Mallorca) and
• Greece.

Long walls and alpine tours can be found

• in the Dolomites and
• in Chamonix (Mont Blanc Massif).

In Switzerland, climbing routes are mostly given in French difficulty grades (5a, continuing with 5b, 5c, then 6a, etc.). But there is also the UIAA scale with Roman numerals (6a is about VI). There are also scales for the overall difficulty of a route (WS, ZS, S,...), how well the route is secured and how well it can be secured, i.e. with friends and wedges on trad routes. An overview of the Difficulty scales can be found here and a somewhat more complete listing here.

If you have any further questions or would like to chat with us, please feel free to contact us. You can find our contact details here.

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