Petr Slanina and the traditional climbing on Czech Republic
's sandstone towers

Rock climbing on the sandstone towers of the Czech Republic is a beautiful and complicated art, shrouded in both history and mystery, where the adventurous aspect and rigid climbing ethics prevail even to this day. We’re talking about thousands and thousands of predominantly traditional climbs on hundreds and hundreds of towers dotted across Saxony, protected by extremely run-out ring bolts and knotted slings since wires, friends or other metal gear could easily damage the soft sandstone. Routes are respected and aspired to, since pushing the grades prematurely could quickly turn ugly…

Someone who knows these ethics intimately is Petr Slanina, better known as Špek, an institution in the Czech climbing scene who over the last 30 years has established more than 2400 new routes in these areas. In this fascinating documentary he demonstrates how much effort - and courage - it takes to establish a new sandstone route and place the huge ring bolts. It’s worth noting that only recently has he resorted to using a power drill. All his other bolts, including the first on this climb at Klokočí, were placed by hand. And, as per tradition, ground-up...