Magic Woods' Pioneer: Zangerl

The beginning of MAGIC WOOD by Bernd Zangerl

At the beginning Thomas "Steini“ Steinbrugger wasn`t even sure if this place, he recently found in a small valley was good for bouldering. Lots of moos, thick woods, hard to get throught, even hard to enter the place......this must have been somewhen in 1999.

„When we just find just 1o good lines,  that would be so great !! „

We drove to averstal, searched a spot, where we could cross the river and entered a magic place. A thick forest with lots of boulders.

It was true.....just a few pieces of rock, the steep ones where we couldn`t  see the holds- have been kind of clean. The rest of the boulders was „green“ and it was very hard to hike around and how can we bring crashpads in here? But the quantity of boulders was immense. We took our brushes and started cleaning some boulders around the now known „sofa surfer“ sektor...and a bit further down at „Camelthrophy“. The first bsuh was done within an afternoon. „ a steel brush every day, keeps the doctor away“ ;-)

It was not a problem to find 10 great lines and we both knew:

There is lots of potential in this little wood and every visit we found some new lines. Some boulders, like steppenwolf, electro boogie, goldfish.... we even found years later by pure accident..or getting lost in in the MAGIC WOODJ

It ended up like this: we worked during the day, drove to averstal late afternoon and cleaned boulders till it was getting dark.  Then we turned on the our gas laterns and climbed till midnight. Next day, same game. We needed  lots of  ladders, ropes and brushes and „tons“ of chalk and &  Steini made the first proper access for us: a steel cable where we could enter the magic place without getting wet.

The news about the new boulder possibility spread out in the little community of those days and our friends Bruno Rüdisser, Jack Müller, Phillip, Thomas Hensch, Pascal Buesser, Marco Goldi,..... joined us in the wood and worked hard every possible minute. Everybody was motivated to find his own line, and having a good time in the wood. It was just a small group of great people who spend their whole free time in magic wood.....

Thomas Steinbrugger, my mentor in bouldering, was always searching and looking for boulders. I think we hiked around in most of the swiss valleys, crossed all mountain passes and whenever we spottet a boulder our of the car: we stopped and checked the line. Thats what we did on our restdays: hiking, hiking and searching.....and we still do we have so many little places hidden in the valley or on the mountains.........