The First 9a: Wolfgang Güllich, Action Directe, and the Move That Changed Climbing

In October 1991, Wolfgang Güllich stood at the base of a short grey limestone wall in the Frankenjura — Bavaria's dense network of crags threaded through forested hills north of Nuremberg — and climbed it. The route was nine metres long. It took him several seasons of attempts, spread across years of work. When he completed the first ascent, it was graded 9a, a grade that had not previously been applied to any route in the world.

The route is called Action Directe. Güllich died in a car accident on the motorway in August 1992, returning from a climbing trip, less than a year after the first ascent. He was 31 years old.

The Frankenjura Context

The Frankenjura is not dramatic in the way of Verdon Gorge, El Capitan, or the Dolomites. It is mostly forested, gently rolling hill country, its crags emerging as grey limestone outcroppings from beech and pine hillsides across a wide area north and northeast of Nuremberg. Individual routes are typically short — 10 to 25 metres — and the rock is pocketed and featured: shallow dishes, pinches, finger-width edges, and occasional technical slabs. The character of the climbing rewards specific finger strength and power over sustained aerobic endurance or traditional lead-climbing boldness.

From the late 1970s through the 1980s, the Frankenjura's climbing community was among the most technically progressive in Europe. Working a route on pre-placed protection bolts — falling freely, analysing sequences, returning to attempt individual moves across multiple sessions — was the standard approach here before the terminology of sport climbing had hardened into the vocabulary it carries now. The rock demanded this method: many of the area's harder routes are simply too difficult to lead in a traditional exploratory style.

Wolfgang Güllich was at the centre of this community from his teens. By 1985 he had made the first ascent of Punks in the Gym at Arapiles in Australia, at the time among the hardest routes in the world, graded 8c. Through the late 1980s he continued adding first ascents in the 8b–8c+ range, in the Frankenjura and at crags across Europe. When he began working what would become Action Directe — probably around 1988–1989 by most accounts — he was already the clearest example in the world of what sport climbing's frontier looked like.

The Route

Action Directe is on a small formation called the Waldkopf, near Pottenstein in the northern Frankenjura. The rock is grey limestone, slightly overhanging, with a character typical of the area: pocketed lower section leading into a sequence of small edge holds. The route's defining move is a double-dyno — a simultaneous launch from two hands off a lower hold to catch a crimp positioned significantly higher, the body airborne through the movement, no intermediate position between the launching hold and the catching hold. You land the crimp or you do not.

This movement is why Action Directe sits where it does in the difficulty scale. A double-dyno on a route at this level requires a combination of finger strength, explosive pulling power, body tension, and timing precision that is less forgiving than almost any other movement type in climbing, because there is no possibility of partial success. The elimination of an intermediate resting hold compresses the entire difficulty of the route into a single action that cannot be broken down further.

Güllich trained specifically for this movement. The tool he developed to do so was a board fitted with horizontal wooden rungs at varying heights above the ground, installed at a training space in Nuremberg associated with the local climbing community — the Campus Centre, from which the board takes the name. The training method involved launching dynamically from lower rungs to catch higher ones using only the hands and arms, with feet hanging free.

The campus board's purpose was to develop contact strength — the ability to hold a small edge in the instant of dynamic impact, when a static grip would fail — and explosive recruitment of the pulling muscles: the latissimus dorsi, the biceps, the forearm flexors, and the rotator cuff stabilisers. These qualities were not, at the time, the focus of standard climbing training methods, which tended to emphasise volume on the wall and general fitness. Güllich's approach was to identify what Action Directe specifically required and build the training stimulus to match it, rather than train generally and hope the specificity emerged.

The campus board became, in the decades following Action Directe, standard equipment in climbing training facilities worldwide. Virtually every dedicated climbing gym built since the late 1990s contains one in some form. The specific exercises — double-dyno drills, laddering sequences, max-reach attempts — are documented in training manuals and coached by professional strength and conditioning coaches who may never have climbed outdoors. The tool outlasted its inventor and continues to develop the specific strength qualities of a generation of climbers who have no direct connection to the Frankenjura or the route that required its invention.

What 9a Meant in 1991

Climbing grades are open-ended and have been extended upward continuously since the modern system was developed in the mid-twentieth century. Action Directe established a new ceiling at 9a — one step above the 8c+ that had represented the frontier — and created a fixed reference point against which subsequent progress has been measured.

The grade itself is partly historical convention: grading is inherently approximate, subject to the judgement of first ascentionists and subsequent repeaters, and comparison across different rock types and route styles is genuinely difficult. What matters about Action Directe's grade is not whether it is precisely equivalent to every other 9a that has been established since, but that a single first ascentionist at a specific location, in a specific year, drew a line that the climbing world recognised as representing a new level of difficulty, and that line has held as the reference point for the grade category.

Adam Ondra — the Czech climber whose subsequent ascents have included routes at 9b+ and 9c — has described Action Directe as one of the most historically significant routes in sport climbing. Adam Ondra established Silence at 9c in Flatanger, Norway in 2017, which is the current hardest grade in the sport. The distance in difficulty from 9a to 9c, crossed in the 26 years between Güllich's first ascent and Ondra's, represents the development arc of an entire sport — and Action Directe sits at the origin point of that arc.

The Frankenjura Today

Action Directe is still climbed by a very small number of the world's strongest sport climbers. The Frankenjura as a whole remains active and, for intermediate-to-advanced sport climbers, one of the more complete climbing areas in central Europe. The majority of routes fall in the 6a–8a range, with a concentration of hard grades that reflects the area's historical character as a training ground for difficult technical climbing.

Getting there: the Frankenjura is accessible from Nuremberg (NUE), approximately 40–80 kilometres from the main climbing sectors. The area covers a wide geographic spread; the clusters around Pottenstein, Streitberg, and Leutenbach are among the most visited. Car access is standard for most sectors. Several crags are within cycling or walking distance of stations on the Nuremberg–Bayreuth and Nuremberg–Forchheim regional rail lines, making day trips from Nuremberg practical without a rental car.

Accommodation: Pottenstein, Streitberg, Tüchersfeld, and Gößweinstein all have guesthouse and holiday apartment options within the main climbing zones. Camping is available in the warmer months. The area is also within reach of Nuremberg as a city base for athletes who want urban infrastructure alongside climbing access.

Season: spring (April–June) and autumn (September–October) offer the most reliable conditions for difficult climbing. Many crags are shaded by forest and dry quickly after rain. Summer heat can push afternoon temperatures above what is comfortable on steep limestone, particularly on south-facing walls; morning sessions in summer are productive, afternoons less so.

What Güllich Left Behind

The campus board is the most visible inheritance. It is present in gyms in Seoul, São Paulo, London, and Boulder because one climber, working a nine-metre route in Bavaria, identified a specific physical quality that existing training methods did not develop, and built a tool to develop it. That the tool turned out to be broadly applicable beyond the specific route that required its invention is what distinguishes it from a one-off adaptation.

Action Directe itself is a fixed point in climbing history — a short route in the forest above a small Bavarian town, the first of its grade, made by an athlete who died before he could see what came after it. The subsequent history of sport climbing's difficulty progression was built on the foundation of that grade. The campus board was the tool that got the first stone of that foundation into place.