Stefan Hochbaum FA’s Obsidian (8C+)

Stefan Hochbaum has done the FA of Obsidian (8C+) in Scharfenstein. (c) Jörn Störtebekker

Can you tell us more about the ascent and the process behind?
Kai Theune (afriend of mine and the guy who developed nearly the whole area) showed me this 12 years old project 3 years ago. After I finished all the problems at this area I started working on this thing. It is a hard 8A+ into Diffuse Reflection (8B+) with no rest.

It’s a 12 moves boulder. After you climb the six 8A+ moves you are pretty tired and still have to climb the hard part (8b+) which made the boulder super hard to send for me. I tried this boulder over 3 years and nearly 55 sessions. It’s pretty hard to get decent conditions. Most of the time the ground is wet and it condensates to the rock. So you have most of the time high moisture in the air. There is never sun so once the ground is wet you need a longer dry period to climb on that thing.

The boulder has lots of small crimps so you need good conditions. Its a fingery, endurance and powerful boulder with 2 hard crux moves which are at the end of the boulder. I set a replica in my homegym and trained some days on it.

But the holds were much better than on the rock so I switched to board climbing and finger training on hangbards.