It was past 4am when we made it back to camp; the sun had already begun to rise. We’d left the party around 2 or 3 and stumbled our way to the Adršpašské pond for an after-hours dip. Now, with dawn rapidly approaching, Drew, Carl, Brittany, and I climbed into our sleeping bags, strewn about the grass only a few meters from the road and someone’s farmhouse. 

This was the second night at the International Mountaineering Film Festival, an annual gathering of climbers, mountaineers, and other outdoors-motivated vagrants in Teplice nad Metuji in the northeast corner of the Czech Republic. Drew’s Reel Rock: an Urban Climbing Experience was being shown as a part of the festival. We were there for the climbing.

Compared to the limestone test pieces in Spain, the boulders of the Fountainbleu, or the alpine granite of the Alps, the Czech Republic’s climbing is significantly less known than its European counterparts. Before I arrived, I had no idea there even eas climbing in the Czech Republic, especially enough to merit an international film festival. Skiing has High Fives in Annecy, France (just down the road from Chamonix) and IF3 in Montreal, Canada, while climbing has film festivals in Banff and the touring Reel Rock Film Festival which lands in climbing hotspots like Boulder, and Salt Lake City. But Teplice nad Metuji - a town of barely over 1,000 people in an otherwise predominantly flat country? What’s in Teplice that draws an international crowd of mountain people every year?

Turns out, some of the best sandstone crack climbing in Europe is just outside Teplice nad Metuji. Along the border with Poland and Germany, grey sandstone cliffs, towers, and hoodoos can be found, pocking the otherwise flat countryside, and lurking the verdant forests. 

The Czech climbing scene has developed and thrived on the sandstone towers of Teplice nad Metuji and Ardspach. The rock itself it incredibly soft. During a particularly slabby portion of my first climb, I kept slipping on what I thought was dirt and sand on the hold. I found out later that it was pulverized rock from my foot-smearing, I was crushing the rock into sand as I tried to stand on it. 

This type of rock has fostered a very unique set of climbing ethics in the Ardspach / Teplice nad Metuji area. Due to the rock’s delicate and brittle nature, massive bolts are used for fixed protection, and protection is sparse at best. There is a minimum distance between bolts on all route, there’s usually at least 10 meters of unprotected climbing to the first bolt, and its common to find 100 - 300 foot towers with only 2 or 3 piece of fixed protection. This means that routes are exceptionally run out, necessitating the use of trad protection. However, metal gear pieces - cams, nuts, hexes, etc. - are not allowed, and the use of chalk is forbidden. 

Besides nerves of steel and hardman mentalities, Ardspach locals use a variety of non-metal devices to protect routes. “Monkey fists” or “baby heads” are essentially knot balls of various sizes, tied in slings or bits of rope to place in cracks as a form of passive pro. “Ufos” are a sightly more active form of pro, essentially a thick piece of webbing with rubber sidewalls contacts, again placed in cracks that can expand outward when loaded. Even when everything goes right, bomber placement on solid rock, falls on trad gear are terrifying. But whippers on knot-balls and Czech-made “ufos”? Exceptionally more terrifying.  

After Drew’s film showing on Friday morning, we went Ardspach to get gripped on sandstone and whip on knots. On our first tower Drew took a sketchy lead through an off-width crack before moving onto a slaby section of face climbing before the top out. I scraped my way through the off-width, onto the slaby face and through to the top. 

After the climb, we returned to Teplice nad Metuji, dropped our gear and hit the town for our first night of debauchery. Thousands of climbers had descended on the sleepy town of Teplice nad Metuji for this festival. The town’s public parks served as makeshift campgrounds, filled with colorful tents and sleeping bags. Vendor tents, beer gardens, and food trucks filled out the town’s main square. A stage was erected for concerts in another public park. The local ranching fields hosted even more tents and camper vans. We went out, Carl showed up in a money suit and Drew in rainbow-colored tights, and drank our weight in cheap Czech beer dancing at the concert until 1 am. 

The following day, we met up with some Czech locals for a full day in Adrspach. Veronica and Vondrej showed us around the towers in the forest, pointing us to class climbs and hidden routes. Drew, Carl, and I set up at the base of a lone sandstone monolith with a splintering handcrack running from top to bottom. Brittany went with the locals to another nearby tower. Drew, again, took the lead. He fought upwards, following the crack until a brief lateral traverse, placing knot balls and ufo wherever the rock allowed. Pulling the crux, Drew popped off and took a sketchy whipper, only to be caught by the ufo he had placed.  At the crux again, he slipped again and was caught by the same ufo piece. Carl followed, and floated to the top of the route with easy. Being my first real hand-jam climb, I got my ass kicked, and struggled to get more than a few moves off the ground. 

As we finished with the first tower, another Czech local, Alesak, approached and asked us if we wanted to do a first ascent. We followed him into the forest to a new route project he was establishing. Carl belayed our local friend while he put up the route. Drew and I climbed the backside of the same tower, an awkward, slippery, slabby climb, where Drew had to stand on my shoulders - a legitimate maneuver in the Ardspach climbing community - to reach holds.  

Drew and Carl followed the new route, named “Cortex Dynamics”. We climbed until sunset, packed up, and hiked out of the forest. That night, we dropped our bags across the street from the local climber’s hangout - a cafe / restaurant just down the road from the forest. We regrouped with Brittney and split a pizza between us. The locals invited us to a party up the road, a few kilometers out of town, as they described it, ‘for climbers, not tourists’. Carl donned his money suit again. 

Under the roof of an abandoned farmhouse, a Czech band played a mix of English-language and Czech classics. We drank and danced deep into the hours of the early morning. We dance in a raucous mosh pit. Drew and Carl stripped naked and jumped over the bonfire outside. We talked with climbers, local and international, exchanging stories, stoke, and close calls. 

Sometime around 3 am, after the band stopped playing and the crowd started to disperse, we set out for the lake with a handful of other climbers. We all stripped naked and jumped into the cold inky black water under the starry early-morning sky. A hour or so later, we unrolled our sleeping bags and inflated our sleeping mattresses as the nighttime darkness gave way to sunrise. 

A few hours later, my 20-degree sleeping bag started to get heat up in the summer sun. In the morning, we could finally see campsite: we slept a few meters from the road, across the street from a restaurant, and in someone’s yard. We quitely packed our things, ate breakfast at the restaurant across the street, and set out for the forest for a last day of climbing. 

Back in the forest, we settled on a tower we’d seen the day before. A short, but interesting crack system running all the way down a tower. It started with some classic hand-jamming, led up to a weird, overhanging roof transverse section, and finished with a crack inset deep inside a dihedral for a combo of crack and face climbing. 

Drew led, placing knots and ufos as he climbed. Carl followed, then Brittney. I went last. Being one of my first times crack climbing, and after my struggles toe and hand jamming the day before (to say nothing of the splitting headache and viscous hangover I had), I had low expectations for myself. But, after watching, the three climbers before me, I put together more bits of technique, and was able to link a few moves on the lower handjam section. Toe jamming came easier as I climbed, and my hands felt more natural, inserting and expanding in the rock.  

A few moves turned into meters, and soon I’d reached the overhanging roof traverse. Placing hands in the crack, and carefully smearing with my feet, I pulled the traverse quickly. Moving into the arete, I stemmed and jammed to gain vertical, pressing my face and body into the abrasive sandstone. Through this section, someone the day before had shed a lot of blood and skin, and dark red splotches painted the walls of the dihedral. After some bits of chimney-offwidth style climbing and negotiation a weird chockstone, I pulled the final moves and stood on top of the rock. We exchanged hi-fives on top, signed our names in the summit notebook, and rappelled back down. 

We hitched a ride back to Prague with our Czech friend, Veronika; Carl had a plane to catch that night. We said our goodbyes to Veronika and Carl, and spent a few hours exploring old-town Prague. Drew and I crashed at Brittney’s place. 

The next day, we said our goodbyes, and went to the airport.

I spent the next few days nursing my cuts, scrapes, and bruises from the rocks, catching up on lost sleep, and reliving the crazy nights and sketchy climbing.