It’s mid-morning on 14 September 1991. The Krottenseer Forst in Germany’s Frankenjura is silent save for the distant warbling of wood pigeons and the tickling breeze in the autumnal canopies. This picturesque vision of silence is faintly disturbed by the unceremonious, creaking groan of overloaded tendons, the flaying of calloused skin grinding over narrowradiused limestone pockets, an imminent deluge of claret doing its darndest to hold itself back and not stifle the efforts of our saintly protagonist just… long… enough.
Seventy seconds of extreme climbing artwork is over! And history is burnt into the retina of climbing lore. Wolfgang Güllich, with barely a sign of effort, has climbed over the top of the crag Waldkopf to complete his magnum opus – Action Directe; the world’s first 9a/35, and the greatest human achievement of all-time.
Action Directe is the route that stoked the dreams of all who followed after. The route that spawned and named a style of climbing and training. The route that still, 30 years on, draws people to that little pocket of otherwise nondescript forest in the middle of the German gingerbread countryside.
Wolfgang's training in the lead up to climbing Action Directe is the stuff of legend. Nestled away in a sunny corner of a ritzy Nuremberg weights gym (The Campus Centre) hangs the original Campus Board. Here, over the months of training, Wolfgang honed his finger strength to a degree that it has never been seen again since. Campusing as he
