by Toby Dunn

Situated in a beautiful, lush alpine valley in Eastern Austria, the Chinese wall is not exactly a well-kept secret; but it is one that seems to have passed most British climbers by. This crag soars above the level of being 'just another mediocre European sport crag', of the perfectly pleasant but at the same time a touch forgettable sort. A day or few at the Chinese wall will leave you with much more than the obligatory residual feeling of pumpedness and a few ticks (hopefully not of the bloodsucking sort!).

The Chinese wall is composed of largely immaculate, dense limestone that forms an edge somewhere around a kilometre broad, rising gently up the mountainside. The routes are about as varied as you could ask for on one crag: short single pitch steep bouldery cranking sits next to cruisy five and six pitch routes; many of the routes also follow strong natural features and lines - a pleasure all too often missed on some sport crags in favour of having straight lines of bolts. Grades range from UIAA 6 to 10- (F5+ to 8a+) in the current guidebook, however the number of projects and new lines indicates possible widening of this bracket, especially considering the vast length of the some of the pitches!
After the ridiculously idyllic approach walk through meadows and pine forest, the crag starts with a fairly amenable looking crack and groove, which turns out to be pretty stiff 8- (one of the drawbacks of the Chinese Wall is the lack of available topos - of which more later) and a not ideal warm up, especially for weaklings such as myself! However, it's a decent route all the same. The lower 50ft or so of the crag is nicely undercut for most of this section, providing the aforementioned bouldery power routes, as well as longer more stamina orientated feasts of pocket hauling, mainly in the 9's (that's UIAA not F9!). Carving through all this steepness is the powerful natural corner line that is taken by the longer outing of Mai Tai (6+, 7-, 6+, 7-), which provides particularly pleasant slab and corner climbing for getting on for the full height of the crag. You also get a good wedge of exposure, as the route traverses out across a slab on the third pitch, which cuts away ,leaving your feet poised directly above the dark forest beneath. This route provides a welcome respite before you get stuck into the pitches beneath it, which blast out across a 'cellar board steep' wall on large rounded pockets and flat edges.
The hardest offering in the current guide is Pistolero at 10-, comparable in style to the routes at Eldorado in the Frankenjura, though on slopier, but considerably larger holds. In the considerably more amenable bracket, there is the superb Madame Butterfly at 8-, which provides a selection of moves certainly not normally associated with F7aish routes. A not inconsiderable leap off the ground (especially good for the perpetual wingers, such as myself, who are considerably shorter than their climbing partner!) lands you on a big flat edge, from which another hefty slap hits a lovely great jug with some relief. Powerful, then delicate, moves get you onto a slab which is duly traversed on perfect pockets to the point where a groove breaks the bulging rock above. Said bulge is dispatched with foot orientated sneakiness, or (like everyone else we saw climb it) by grunting quite a lot and having a back like a relief map of the Himalayas.