Climbing Gyms in Prague – A Visitor’s Guide

Smichoff – Prague’s largest climbing center

I just returned from a weeklong business trip to Prague.  I had quite a bit of downtime so I checked out three climbing gyms.  There’s not a lot of information online (or in English) about the gyms in Prague, so I thought I’d post it here for other visitors.  Climbing at local gyms turned out to be a great way to escape the tourist areas and experience the local (climbing) culture.

Prague has at least half a dozen climbing gyms (or walls that are part of a fitness gym) but most of them are small or only offer bouldering.  I visited the two largest roped climbing gyms and the best bouldering gym (according to a few locals).  The primary difference between gyms in the US and gyms in Prague is that there are basically no toprope setups .  In other words, if you climb a route you lead it.  In contrast, the majority of US gyms are set up for toprope climbing (although leading is fine too).  Also, most of the gyms have small cafes with beer on tap!

Here’s a quick summary of the gyms I visited:

Gym #1:  Ruzyne ( www.stena-ruzyne.com )

This is the oldest indoor gym in Prague.  It’s a 20 minute drive from Old Town Prague, but it’s a good gym.  There are two large wall – one indoor and one outdoor.  Unfortunately I didn’t have a partner so I spent my session in the bouldering cave, which is small and doesn’t have many marked problems.

The indoor wall at the Ruzyne Climbing Center

The awesome outdoor wall at Ruzyne

Be warned that this gym is hard to find.  My taxi driver had to call the front desk twice and even then I had to get out and walk around a building to find it.

Contact Info:

Climbing Center Ruzyně
Drnovská 19
160 00 Praha 6 – Ruzyně
+420 775238814
stena@stena-ruzyne.com

 

Gym #2:  Boulder Bar ( www.boulder.cz )

This is my kind of bar!  This bouldering gym was recommended to my by local climbers I met at Ruzyne.  It’s an easy and pleasant 1.5 mile walk from Old Town Prague.  It’s a small gym but the bouldering is really good.

The entrance to Boulder Bar

Boulder Bar is small but has high quality bouldering

 Contact Info:

Boulder Bar
U Exhibition 11/230
Praha 7 – Holešovice
+420 220 514 540
bar@boulder.cz

 

Gym #3:  Smichoff ( www.lezeckcentrum.cz )

I saved the best for last.  This is the largest gym in Prague and it’s truly world class. It’s located in an old Skoda factory about 3 miles from Old Town Prague.  It’s a little tricky to find but you can basically follow Google Maps directions to get to the vicinity then head toward the tall smoke stack.  There are small signs along the way.  You could walk there from Old Town but it’s easier to take a taxi.  There are a ton of routes and lots of different features to climb (including cracks).  There is not a bouldering area, so you’ll need a partner.  Or, you can do what I did and hire a gym employee to belay you for 400 Czech koruna (about $20) per hour (call ahead to arrange an instructor or belayer).  I wish we had a gym of this quality in DFW!  See the top of this post for a picture of Smichoff’s walls.

Smichoff Climbing Center is hard to find.  Look for small signs and head toward the smoke stack.  The entrance is on the left in front of the motorcycle.

 Contact Info:

Climbing Center Smichoff
Cross 6
15000 Prague 5 – Smíchov
+420 604 240 887
info@lezeckecentrum.cz

Kevin’s Chia Power Porridge

I frequently exercise first thing in the morning so I need a breakfast that will provide energy but also digest quickly.  I recently ran across a great recipe for chia porridge in an eBook from Kristen and I’ve modified it a bit.

The main ingredient is chia seed (ch..ch…ch…chia pet), a dietary staple of the legendary Tarahumara (a.k.a. “running people”) that live in Mexico’s Copper Canyons.  If you read the popular book “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall you’ve heard to the Tarahumara.  They are probably the greatest long distance runners on the planet, running 50 miles or more for pleasure, often carrying nothing more than a bag of chia seed.

I won’t go into all the reasons that chia seed is a a nutritional powerhouse, but suffice it to say that they are packed with easily digested and absorbed nutrients.  Try it for yourself…

• Put 2 tablespoons of chia seed into a bowl.  You can buy bags of chia seed at most natural food stores.
• Add 1/2 cup (4 oz.) of almond milk (ideally homemade – more on that soon).
• Let the chia seed soak for 15 minutes or longer, mixing occasionally.  The seeds will soak up the almond milk and become gel-like.
• Add 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed (ideally freshly ground using a coffee grinder) and 1 tablespoon of flax oil.
• Add a thinly sliced banana (if you don’t like bananas you can also use a handful of blueberries).
• Mix everything together with a spoon, crushing the banana into the mixture.
• Enjoy!

This is a vegan dish, but that’s not why I like it.  I like it because it’s tasty and you can eat it right before working out and you won’t feel bloated.  I also notice a nice energy boost.  I ate it yesterday before a two hour ride and felt great the whole time.  However, if I was doing a bigger workout I’d probably eat something with more protein (e.g. eggs) before and/or bring food along.

Humbled Times Three

The intimidating but moderate second pitch of Five Pack

Rock climbing is one of those sports that tends keeps your ego in check.  You’re always one mishap or bad decision away from being in a sticky situation (or worse).  This is particularly true of multi-pitch trad climbing, where you have to deal with gear placements (or lack thereof), route-finding, weather, exposure, rope management, variable rock quality, fatigue, hydration/nutrition, and of course the climbing itself.  It’s a challenging endeavor, which is one of the reasons I love it!  With that in mind…

Blake and I had big plans for last weekend’s trip to Red Rocks.  My personal goal was to onsight Levitation 29, a route considered by many to be the best route at one of the world’s best climbing destinations. Lynn Hill calls it her favorite route of all time.  L29 consists of 7 pitches of mostly 5.10 and 5.11 climbing guarded by a grueling 2 hour approach hike.  It’s a big objective for a 42 year old weekend warrior that lives 3 hours from the nearest crag, but I had been training hard and climbing strong (albeit mostly in a gym).  Also, on a recent business trip to Vegas I onsighted Running Man, a route similar in difficulty and style to the crux pitch of L29.  So I figured I’d see how things went and if I felt strong maybe I’d give it a shot.  The best laid plans of mice and men…

One of many training sessions in the man cave.

THURSDAY
We flew to Vegas on Thursday morning and drove straight to Red Rocks, selecting Y2K and The Next Century as our “warmup” routes.  I had climbed both routes before and the crux pitch of The Next Century felt just as spicy the second time.  After 12 hours of flying, driving, hiking, and climbing we grabbed dinner and headed to the hotel.

FRIDAY
For our first full day we decided to climb  Sweet Thin, one of several mega-classic routes on the remote Brownstone Wall.  The approach to Brownstone involves about 2 hours of steep hiking through boulders, talus, and slabs.  It was worth the effort – the 5th pitch of Sweet Thin is one fo the finest I’ve done at Red Rocks.

P7 of Sweet Thin – sweet indeed!

 We finished the climb, scrambled to the summit of Juniper Peak (2200′ above the parking lot) and began the descent.  Maybe it was the heat or the fact that I hadn’t done much hiking or trad climbing in months, but we were thrashed by the time we made it back to the car.

At that point it dawned on me that I had already burned too many matches on this trip and Levitation 29 probably wasn’t in the cards. Humbled part one.

SATURDAY
Adventure Punks was put up in 1983 but was all but forgotten until recently.  Now it’s considered one of the best routes at Red Rocks.  It’s been on my tick list for a while, although I had read that it has an unprotected (i.e. dangerous) start.  Sometimes these things get over-exaggerated online so we hiked up Pine Creek Canyon to check it out for ourselves.  Unfortunately the runout was worse, not better, than advertised – definitely X-rated.  The first protection (which is marginal) is about 20-25 feet above a sloping ledge (which probably wouldn’t stop a fall) and is guarded by greasy-looking 5.10 face climbing (or an equally dicey 5.9 traverse).  If you were to fall, a medivac would be your best case.  Even though it’s highly unlikely that I’d fall, it’s just not worth the risk with a family back home.  Too bad because the route looks absolutely amazing.  Humbled part two.

The 5.10X start of Adventure Punks
That flake looks even further away in person!
(picture from Mountain Project, this isn’t me)

As a consolation, we hiked back down the canyon to climb The Walker Spur, yet another classic among classics.  I can’t emphasize enough how good that route is – even though it’s only 2 pitches it’s as fine a 5.10 as you’ll find anywhere.

P1 of The Walker Spur – Yosemite-style climbing at Red Rocks

To cap off the day we hiked around the corner to Dark Shadows Wall and climbed Parental Guidance.  This route has a scary start and at 5.10 c/d it’s near my trad lead limit.  Considering how tired I was from the day’s events, I was very psyched to get the onsight.  Even though we only climbed 3 pitches, with all the hiking it felt like a long day and three straight 7-8 hour days of hiking and climbing were beginning to take their toll.

SUNDAY
The heat and our sore bodies pretty much ruled out the long routes we had planned for this trip (maybe we’re getting soft) so we picked a lesser-climbed route on shady Magic Mountain called Five Pack.  When you do a route that doesn’t get climbed a lot you never know what you’re in for and this route felt like a handful.  There was lots of loose rock (I pulled a dinner plate sized rock off on P2 that almost hit Blake) and the climbing, while moderate, felt serious.  The “5.9″ third pitch felt sketchy and after misinterpreting the route description I was forced to set up a horrible hanging belay 20-30 feet off route.  By the time Blake made it to me I was pretty spooked.   I rarely bail from routes (I’ve now done it exactly twice) but when I spied a makeshift rappel anchor 15 feet below us it made the decision too easy.  Looking back, I wish I had taken a little time to collect myself, moved our belay to the right location, and fired the last pitch.  Humbled part three.

We rapped down and traversed Magic Mountain to a nice little single pitch crack climb called Small Purchase.  It was a nice finish to the day and the trip.

Nearing the top of Small Purchase

As an added bonus, we discovered a great raw food restaurant called Go Raw Cafe.  I’m not a vegan or raw-foodist, but I try (with limited success) to eat a high-raw, high-vegetable diet.

Portabella wrap at Go Raw Cafe – Raw, vegan, and delicious!

Overall it was a great trip, even if we did have to reset our expectations.  As Blake says, “Red Rocks always delivers.”  And that’s what keeps me coming back.

Going Solo – A Solo Toprope Setup

I travel to Las Vegas fairly frequently for business and when I’m there I usually try to get out for a few hours of climbing with my friend, Larry.  But Larry isn’t always available, so I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the idea of solo climbing on a top rope.  So I did some research to determine the base (and safest) way to do it.  After reading a bunch of articles online (including one from Steph Davis, one from Matt Samet, and one from Petzl) I decided that the best setup was to to use two different ascenders (or progress capture devices).

I chose the Petzl Microcender and the Petzl Micro Traxion.  I use the Microcender as the primary device because it doesn’t have teeth that could potentially damage the rope sheath (which would be highly unlikely due to the small forces involved in a top rope fall).

Here’s how the basic setup works:

1. Find a suitable route that has an accessible anchor point at the top, follows a fairly straight line, and doesn’t have sharp edges that could damage the rope when it is weighted (when rappelling or climbing).  If you’re climbing alone, it’s also a good idea to choose a route that isn’t too remote and/or will enable you to get help by phone or yelling if something unusual were to happen.
2. Create a bomber anchor and fix the rope to it (I use a figure eight knot).  If the route is shorter than half a rope length, attach the rope at its midpoint and hang both strands down the route (see #7 below).  If the route is longer than half a rope length, attach the rope at its end and hang the entire rope down the route.
3. Rappel the route using your favorite rappel device (I use a GRIGRI 2 for single rope rappels).
4. Set up your progress capture devices as shown above and below.  Shoulder slings and a short length of webbing or cord are used to keep the primary device up and away from the secondary device.  This cord is not load bearing so it doesn’t need to be beefy.
5. It helps to weight the bottom of your rope with a water bottle, pack or something else to make sure that the rope runs smoothly through your devices.
6. Double-check your setup by weighting it and then climb!
7. OPTIONAL:  If you have two strands of rope hanging down from your anchor (see #2 above) then you can tie loops (e.g. overhand on a bight) at 10-15 foot intervals on the second strand and clip into these loops as you climb.  This provides redundancy for the rope in case it is severed.  In my opinion this is not necessary in most cases.  I would do this if I felt that the chosen route had high potential to damage my rope if I fell.

Here’s another view of my setup:

And here’s an image from Petzl showing a similar setup (my setup is a slightly simplified version of this):

I tried this setup for the first time yesterday on a route called Chicken Eruptus at Willow Spring.  I anchored my rope to a large tree, rapped the route, and climbed it 3 times.  It was almost 200 feet from the base to my anchor so I was able to climb about 600 feet in 20-30 minutes.  The self-belay setup worked very smoothly and I felt just as safe as I’d feel on a toprope with a partner belaying me.

The only improvement I’ll make to this setup is to use carabiners on the progress capture devices that are designed to prevent cross-loading such as the Black Diamond Gridlock or DMM Belay Master 2.  These carabiners will keep everything nicely aligned and tidy.

This setup combined with common sense provides a safe way to climb outside without a partner.  With all the business travel I do, this will open up some new possibilities…

Second Time’s the Charm

Our Objective – Castleton Tower from the Parking Area

Every year during our family ski trip to Telluride I sneak away for a day of rock climbing.  One of the reasons I love Telluride is that it’s situated in the western San Juan Mountains of Colorado, just a short drive away from several world class climbing destinations:  Indian Creek, Moab, Castle Valley and Fisher Towers in Utah and the Black Canyon in Colorado (not to mention Ouray, which is the epicenter of ice climbing in the U.S.).

Castleton Tower is located just outside Moab and is one of the world’s most iconic rock formations.  The Kor-Ingalls route, established in 1961, is one of the 50 Classic Climbs of North America and has been on my tick list for years.   I attempted it last year with Andres Marin, a guide from San Juan Mountain Guides, and we were turned back by 50 mph winds and crowds.

This year we struck gold.  The weather was perfect – 65 and sunny with no wind – and we had the tower to ourselves.  After chasing Andres up the strenuous approach we climbed Kor-Ingalls in four pitches.  The climbing involves lots of offwidth cracks and chimneys – features I usually avoid – but the moves were really thought provoking and elegant.  Hidden holds seemed to reveal themselves at just the right time.

 Andres Marin leading the Kor-Ingalls route

And what a summit!  From the top you have a 360 view of Castle Valley and the mountains beyond.  After a few minutes on the summit we rapped the route and hiked down, completing the route car-to-car in about 4 hours (not bad!).  It was an amazing day – definitely on my top 5 list.  Here’s the view from the summit:

2012 Cycling Report

Deep In the Pain Cave:  Topping out on Coleman Valley Road at Levi’s GranFondo

A reporter once asked cycling legend Fausto Coppi what it takes to become a champion.  Coppi’s response:  “Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike.”  There are no shortcuts to success in cycling (or any other pursuit for that matter).  I started riding as a way to improve my cardio fitness for rock climbing.  I’m by no means a great cyclist, but over the years I’ve logged enough miles to hold my own on group rides.   On a good day and under the right circumstances I can even mix it up with racers.  Having a strong day on the bike is a great feeling, but to maintain at this level I need to spend at least 3-4 hours a week in the saddle.  And that’s the rub.  Ultimately cycling is a “second hobby” for me, and with a demanding job and two youngsters at home, I have maybe 8-10 hours a week to pursue my athletic interests.  If I want to achieve my objectives in rock climbing, I need to cut back on cycling, re-dedicate myself to climbing, and swallow my pride when I get dropped on group rides (easier said than done).  With that as context, here are my numbers for 2012:

Total miles:  3,896 (75 miles and 2.25 rides per week)

Up 17% over 2011 / Down 22% from 2010

212 extra miles on foot

To a non-cyclist these numbers may seem big, but a serious cyclist wouldn’t consider this to be a lot of training (many of the guys I ride with do 5-6 rides a week).  My mileage will probably drop pretty significantly in 2013 as I re-focus on climbing.  I’ve got some big climbing objectives in 2013 – but more on that later…

Splitter

Splitter Weather on Yasmine Bleeth (5.9)

In rock climbing, the word “splitter” is used to describe a perfect, clean crack.  A splitter crack usually means great climbing.  Climbers also use the word to describe all things awesome.  Blake and I just finished a 6 day trip to Joshua Tree National Park that was splitter in just about every way.

Splitter weather!  On our last trip to JTree in January we spent a lot of time shivering at belays due to cold temps and high winds.  This time we had no wind, highs in the 60′s, and cloudless skies.  It’s pretty nice to climb in a t-shirt in December.

Splitter accommodations!  We usually stay in a (cheap) motel on climbing trips but this time we rented a small house located just outside the park entrance.  It was a cool modern/industrial design with a gourmet kitchen and hot tub.  Sunset was around 5pm each day, so it was nice to have a comfortable place to hang out in the evenings.

Our Home for the Week

Small and Simple

Splitter food!  Joshua Tree is what some folks would call a “granola” community.  As Blake says, the hippies at Jtree make other hippies look like yuppies.  One of the benefits of this is that most of the restaurants serve fantastic healthy (and mostly vegan/organic) food.  Within a half mile of our house were several great restaurants and a natural food market.  Our favorite is Natural Sisters Cafe - we stopped there every day after climbing to get the Rock Climber Smoothie.  There is also a great pizza joint called Pie for the People.  Their gluten free veggie pizza might be the best I’ve had anywhere.

Veggie Sandwich from Natural Sisters Cafe

You can’t buy this at Tom Thumb!  My New Favorite Cereal (and it lives up to its name).

Splitter climbing!  With over 7000 routes, there is enough climbing at JTree for a lifetime.  We stuck to the “mega-classics” – three and four star routes.  That meant we had to move around a lot, so our daily pitch count wasn’t very high but we made up for it in quality (and difficulty).  JTree is notorious for sandbagged ratings and runout slab climbing.  5.7′s will keep your attention and 5.10 slab climbing feels desperate and scary.  My main objective for the trip was Illusion Dweller, a long, beautiful crack on The Sentinel.  Blake and I both onsighted it and I got a great video of Blake fighting through the overhanging finish.  We joked that it was the first ascent of the route by an offensive lineman.  My other favorites were Sail Away, Ace of Spades, Ball Bearing, and Bird of Fire.  The only downside to the climbing at Jtree is that the routes are short – almost all single pitch under 100 feet.  I prefer long multi-pitch routes, but in the winter JTree is one of the only reliable climbing options.

Blake on P1 of the Stellar Route Ball Bearing

Our tick list:

• Double Cross (5.7+)
• Touch and Go (5.9)
• Bird of Fire (5.10a)
• Illusion Dweller (5.10b)
• Ball Bearing (5.10a)
• Sail Away (5.8-)
• Pope’s Crack (5.9)
• Yasmine Bleeth (5.9)
• Dos Chi Chis (5.10a)
• Love Gas (5.10a)
• Showers With Dad (5.10b)
• A Bull with Gas (5.9)
• Taken for Granite (5.8-)
• Pony Express (5.9)
• 200 Motels (5.8-)
• Bitch, Bitch (5.7 R)
• Which Bitch (5.9)
• Ace of Spades (5.9)
• Popular Mechanics (5.9)
• Funky Dung (5.8)
• Overseer (5.9)