Speed Integral 9a by Luisa Deubzer

Luisa "Lulu" Deubzer has done Speed Integral (9a) in Voralpsee. The 28-year-old was one of the very best Lead competition climbers in the world at age 15. Two years later she did her first 8b and stopped competing. Last year she did her first 8c (interview), and this spring she has done two more as well as the trad climb , in spite of having struggled with some injuries.

What is next climbing wise for you and what do you think would be most important for us climbers to change/improve in order to reduce our footprint?
I guess I can stop sport climbing for a bit now… This summer I’ll hopefully get to enjoy plenty of moderate multi pitch climbing and mountains. As Speed really was this life-time dream of mine, I want to bask in this feeling for a bit and the plan therefore is to not get sucked into the next big project right away… Let’s see how that goes.

To your second question, I’m clearly not in the position to tell others what to do, as I am myself far from perfect. Climbers, just like anyone else, all have different lifestyles. Therefore, I think it makes sense to look at your individual footprint to identify which area you still have the biggest room for improvement and how you could and want to adapt your lifestyle accordingly.

Collectively speaking, I think there is still a lot of room for denormalising plane travel to go climbing. I feel like the narrative around this has already changed quite a bit in the last years, but it is still somehow ingrained in our culture that is is „cool“ to discover far away places on your holiday, to escape winter, to chase good conditions… Not to say you can’t take the plane to go on a trip, I just think it shouldn’t be the socially acceptable default anymore in these times… Every time, someone decides against a trip by plane and talks about the environmental reasons for it, it changes the narrative a bit. To me, the French/Belgian Crew sailing to Yosemite is one of the most inspiring things this year, especially with Sebastien Berthe having such a hard objective. Of course, there are a lot of other climbing culture specific habits that could require change, the traveling one is just the first one that comes to my mind. A couple years ago, I tried to order my thoughts around this topic a bit in the form of words if anyone is interested to read further: https://talesofhillsandrails.weebly.com/faq Nothing of this is novel, just a collection of discussion points around this.

Fanatic climbing has published a long interview.

"I like getting my ass kicked and expanding my comfort zone, that’s why I really enjoy that climbing in the wider sense is so varied. I have broadened my skills in the other forms of climbing quite a bit over the last years as a member of the current all-female ‘Young Alpinist Group’ of the German Alpine Club (although I still suck at these various forms of Alpinism). Depending on the season, weather and motivation, I have periods where I ice and mixed climb more, do multipitches or a mountain here and there. At the end of the day, however, my strengths do lie in sport climbing." Photo: DAV- Silvan Metz