If steep and powerful bouldering is your thing then the Carinthian region in Austria is just the place for you. This is one of Austria's best kept secret venues, everything is steep they don't clean slabs of because they take longer to clean than the overhanging stuff and to boot there's the added bonus of everything been on immaculate Granite.

I first visited the region earlier this year and was shocked by the quality and the amount of problems, due to a lot of the areas being on private land no guide or maps have been produced for the area. You'll just have to search and find the place yourself but once you do it's well worth it, with some of the best scenery I have ever seen and some world class problems also.

The only down side to Maltatal is that there isn't much easy bouldering in the area, on our first day the easiest warm up was Font. 6c+. This is not surprising once you realise that this is the stomping ground of Loskott and the Schwaiger brothers. Some of the locals showed us round and some of the things that these Austrian 'powerhouses' have succeeded on is truly shocking.

'Wrestling with an Alligator' was the first sick Loskott creation we were shown, situated on a hillside the boulder overhangs by about fifty degrees. Needless to say the Font. 8b+ grade made us shy away from putting our boots on, not only that but the edges on the face would have been poor on a vertical wall never mind something this steep. I thought that this problem was sick but when I was shown the project that Klem Loskott had been trying I realised that a whole new power generation was upon us.

'Bugeleisen' blast's it's way up a forty-five degree overhanging wall on crimps that all seem to face in the wrong direction. Whilst we were in Maltatal Klem hadn't completed this project, but he recently did at a grade of Font. 8b+.Check out the extremely impressive photo's of Klem's ascent, oh and by the way if you were wondering this latest addition to Malta still has the sit-down-start to be added at a grade of around Font. 8c.