The Country Where Climbing Didn't Come Naturally
[Music] flat humid cold denmark is not really suited for climbing this small country of northern europe is one of the flattest in the world with an average altitude of 30 meters and is deprived of any rock its climate is rather cold it rains every other day and the night falls at three in the afternoon during the winter season despite these grim conditions the six million inhabitants population has adapted it is one of the happiest in the world and most importantly it is growing a small community of climbers let's see how this community manages to fulfill its passion for climbing dense beer or clatterclub the danish mountain club was created in 1951 in copenhagen to organize alpine expeditions abroad when free climbing started to emerge in europe in the 70s rock climbing became slowly a sport on its own in denmark rather than just a training for mountaineering we have met one of these first rock climbers who entered the club in 1980 i found the the mountain club through a fellow student in geology i saw some pictures he had on his wall and i was like wow why can you do that since i was a kid i've been reading about mountaineering at several books from back then but i never realized that you could do it here in denmark um so it was kind of a revelation for me and danish mountain club had about 500 members all over denmark but mostly in copenhagen it was a copenhagen club but there was a few dedicated rock climbers among those 10 20 people doing regularly rock climbing you know everyone if i saw someone with a gortex jacket and a long distance in the nearby somewhere in copenhagen at a long distance i instantly knew that when i got up to that person i would know him it was a it was a very closed group of people the group would go on expeditions abroad in norway france yugoslavia to train cooler back in sweden was their preferred and closest but two hours away from copenhagen and the group would climb there almost every weekend all year around but the club was not only gathering to climb the club had a small apartment in central copenhagen and every thursday we will meet then just talking you know reading libraries guidebooks and showing pictures and preparing for the next trip one time there was some italian climbers visiting some friends they had here in denmark and they were astonished they couldn't have something like that in italy they couldn't understand that 50 people every thursday and i realized wow they don't have that but of course in in the mountain areas they have the mountain huts they go there on friday evening or in the saturday and they meet people and then they go climbing we couldn't go climbing anywhere so we met there you know to satisfy our need for just climbing gossip the climbers would find any possible way to live their passion even training on the walls of the city to prepare for the next outdoor climb [Music] the golden age of filtering lasted until 1991. and then of course came the climbing walls and then it was natural to create a club around a climbing wall and suddenly now i don't know how many there's at least 50 clubs in denmark with dedicated people probably and doesn't matter mostly for indoor climbing denmark has a long tradition of clubs in every town even in the smallest every sport has its own being part of a club and participating to it is very common as most of the time they are managed by volunteers my name is susie denabo and i've been climbing since i was seven years old we are now going to take a look at the gym where it all started for me i have been part of the gerharten club since its creation in 2003. apart from competing i have been root setting planning trainings and coaching the youth team in my spare time i have also been a member of the board for four years and i used to know every member of the little community so even very young it is possible to be pretty active for your club and it is very common for the members to get involved into it in denmark a strong aspect of our culture is hyge a concept that describes a nice cozy comfortable atmosphere for example this is phoebe this is hygge and this is also huge piracy is a hugely club where people are coming to spend a nice time climbing with their friends and family for sure it is not the best facility to train hard but there are other clubs that are more dedicated to that is that a roof i guess it's a roof raski le clutter club is almost a caricature of these more hardcore clubs located in the basement it reunites the equipment the dust and the sound of hard training sessions [Music] some of its members are among the best climbers in denmark competing and also active outdoor the boulders of the gym can be old school some even reproduce outdoor projects others are set especially for dry tooling but there are also some more modern style problems with newer holes more oriented towards competition training in raski le cletter club as in most clubs the community is quite small rarely exceeding 100 members and the club is as much a place of socializing as of training but some communities are much wider this is the case of dtu climbing a club located on the technical university campus at the north of copenhagen dtu climbing is one of the clubs that are at the dtu the university and it's made by the students and for the students mostly but everyone is welcome last year we amounted to have a thousand members which makes us one of the biggest climbing clubs in denmark member-wise one of the reasons is that is very accessible very good for internationals and is also one of the cheaper gyms that we have in denmark half of the community is composed of foreign students and most of its members are beginners wanting to invest themselves into the student life and to meet new people through a new sport in this mix of cultures generations of students have added their often handmade equipment and the club does not hesitate to ask for help when needed so every time that we have a section cleaning we usually hire people from outside to come set some routes for us and then we also have our main seller or our chairman charlie which sets most of the roots up here but everyone that is a part of the club is allowed to build their own roots as long as they follow a few simple guidelines like keeping the same color and then not making any dangerous moves that could harm other people these three different clubs have their own profile of members their own way of practicing and their own vision of climbing in fact in all denmark every climbing club has its own identity shaped since its creation by members discovering and experimenting but all these clubs have in common to be very pedagogical about climbing gathered since 1995 under clatrophobono the danish climbing federation the voluntary run clubs organize courses and certifications where rope techniques even advanced are taught in depth when they climb outdoor the danes are well prepared for it no time is lost and safety is key with denmark having a strong culture of travel it is no surprise that the clubs often organize outdoor climbing trips abroad vacation everyone is on climbing trips people are goal oriented because um i'm on on this climbing trip it costs this much to go to this country and now i want the results or i want a very very nice pleasant vacation climbing i usually train indoors i prepare so i get most the most out of my trip being in a good shape or preparing for the type of climbing i have to do indoor or outdoor these clubs were the only way to climb in denmark until 2010 so we had the danish climbing federation and under danish climbing federation there was a lot of different clubs and they were working together and then in 2010 we had the first commercial gyms and we also had a big outdoor league tower built in copenhagen with this tower in banana park owned by nerbo clatterkloop climbing arrives for the first time in plain sight in the middle of the capital climbing is no longer a confidential sport and resources start to be allocated to it and this led to a new milestone we are in front of blocks and walls the biggest climbing gym in denmark let's go in and have a look [Music] in 2013 when the first climbing club of denmark danspiel or kleptoclub presented one of the biggest indoor climbing walls of europe at the time it was a huge event for the climbing community with adam andra even being present at the opening event the arrival of the gym increased even more the new dynamic of the sport in denmark in the last decade the number of climbers has grown by 10 percent every year to reach around 15 000 regular climbers in 2020 the budget for competitions and elite also increased leading to more support towards the national teams we have training schemes now that makes a very nice blocks and walls quickly became the reference for danish elite climbers regularly hosting training camps national competitions and nordic championships 30 of the visitors of the gym are non-members of the club and are paying for a one-day ticket this new economic system has become increasingly popular in the past 10 years with six commercial gyms now open in the country and two more on their way most of the new climbers do not belong to a climbing club but rather practice in one of these new modern facilities as more people that started climbing around denmark has more gyms open than all these gyms are doing differently we also see this new attendance in denmark that people are shoveling a little bit around in the climbing gyms so we see people who maybe buy clip cards for different gyms instead of committing only to one gym being open all day long the commercial gyms brought to the danish climbers the time flexibility the traditional clubs lacked but also a wider range of training possibilities style boulders opened in february 2019 at the north of copenhagen and quickly attracted beginners from the neighborhood but also a lot of experienced climbers from the whole region the gym has a bouldering wall with around 110 problems distributed in six levels of difficulty a training area with a spray wall and a moon board and an area for the children the entrance fee very similar to other climbing gyms of the country is a bit expensive even for the high cost of living in copenhagen so the membership is quickly advantageous but is still around eighty percent higher than the yearly membership in a traditional climbing club in return bison boulders wants to be modern using and experimenting with the latest technologies of the climbing industry holds from a large variety of brands experimentations in 3d modelling of the boulders air filtration system and a hold cleaning system but more than that the gym wants to bring the best route setting quality to denmark [Music] in bison brothers we set one time two weeks a week and that's usually 15 to 20 bullets we changed the whole gym in about one and a half months the fast turnover of the problems does not compromise their quality the team of six route setters gather the best in denmark some being former or current competitors of the danish national team the gym itself is very much competition oriented divided in sectors named after the ifsc world cups it organizes every month a friendly competition with a final round the boulder and bayard and it also hosts national competitions organized by the danish federation in 2021 the gym also intends to host its first nordic championships after each event the problems stay on the wall for the customers the competition style of climbing proposed not very common in denmark is adapted to every level there's a lot of different kinds of people we have a lot of the top time with denmark but we also have a lot of kids and we have a lot of just new people to climbing so we try to set something for everybody but it's for people that wants a bit of a talent that doesn't come just for the job the team's work is driven by a particular conception of climbing outdoor climbing makes sense because it is the struggle of a human against a natural formation that will exist forever an ascent carries a notion of timeless achievement over something overwhelming nature in a gym on the other hand the problems are ephemeral and artificial [Music] the root setting it's done by some danes and we just put it up and in a few weeks it's gone again so it won't make sense to be that goal oriented on the finish hold it would make more sense to be oriented on the quality of the climb and the lesson of the movement like what are you going to learn here and can you share it with your fellow climber that's next to you so what do you want to set right now the visual impression is very strong it could be cool to have a boulder that's like very difficult to see but you realize it once you've seen this then you realize there's like another boulder more than tops to collect the root settlers want their creations to be lasting lessons to be shared a good example of this vision is the oons bison the finest problem of the week whose beta is posted on instagram in order to be studied by the climbers pedagogy and community are two values inherited from the clubs and it is through new technologies and root setting they have to live on the social atmosphere that were in the small climbing clubs it was hard to translate this to these bigger commercial gyms the climbing development through route setting not only means new moves it's also like what happens on the map between the people that's there could we through retailing get better at facilitating the social culture in the gyms in these times of fast growth questions about climate development occur worldwide but for small nations like denmark a key problem is sustainability this knowledge that we start to build up both as professional route setters or what they know in small clubs it's very valuable information if you're a tiny country this knowledge we have in the community it's very important to figure out how we could share it and develop it because well one scenario could be if we gather the information on very few individuals and they become very very good and everyone relies on these five people and then they start to get injured or leave the sport and stuff like this then we maybe lose a lot of information the question is of course should we do a education a returning education that could potentially be a way to share information the clubs are still there the commercial gyms are here now and i think more will come but how are they going to be connected that's for the future what temperature here you guess around zero gold from the first rock trips of the 80s to the modern gyms the problematic of climbing have changed the climbers too resourceful members of a small community back then they have become independent customers of an exponentially fast growing activity but still remains the urge to fulfill a passion for climbing in a country where there are no rocks my ambition with bison is to make people climb us that people really start liking climbing and maybe go travel for climbing and to me it doesn't really matter where it takes you if it takes you into competition or it takes you to the rocks or it just takes you here in the weekends as long as you identify yourself with being a climber and you think a lot about it in your everyday then to me you are a climber in 2017 opened amma avagi a sustainable power plant participating in making copenhagen co2 neutral by 2025 three years later in 2020 the first big wall of denmark opened on the side of the building even though there is no rock a climber can be found everywhere the activity in the community may be changing but be reassured he will find a way to climb [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ready
2021-10-15 08:45
