Andrej Mašera
Extreme ferratas are here
Last September in this spot in the intro Dangerous Self-Deception I thought about
the meaning of extreme (sport, adrenaline) ferratas that have exploded in Austria, and predicted
the possibility that they will soon appear here too. Didn't have to wait long! A group
of dedicated ferrata builders1 from PD Vinska Gora near Velenje has made an extremely demanding sports ferrata of Austrian type in the nearby wall of Gonžarjeva peč.
Climbing routes are the topic of the month in this issue of PV, the issue is illuminated from several different angles.
The problem I see regarding Gonžarjeva peč is not the construction of such a ferrata, but lies
elsewhere. Upon opening the path they issued an informational sticker, on which the route is drawn,
added some warnings that are unfortunately written in rather clumsy Slovenian and quite arbitrarily
and inconsistently translated into German and English. We also see that
sponsorship over the path has been taken over by PZS, which has included it among its training polygons.
On the sticker there are also classifications of the ferrata difficulty in a special frame, Austrian and compared to it our "own". And – here's the hook! The Austrian classification, marked with capital
letters (A, B, C … F and beyond) is distinctly calibrated for sports ferratas, as it practically puts all
classic climbing routes in groups A and B. Grade C already means serious climbing in vertical
wall, mostly just along the steel cable, with few brackets and/or pitons. Ferratas that would match Austrian
ratings from D onwards, we don't have at all on Slovenian territory (of course excluding
Gonžarjeva peč, rated D/E)!
The parallel Slovenian classification on the sticker marks ferratas A as "demanding paths", B and C
as "very demanding paths", D–F as "SECURED CLIMBING PATHS". That's completely new,
something in complete contradiction to the official classification of hiking paths that PZS
has been enforcing in our mountains for a long time in written guidebooks and also on direction signs.
If we quickly refresh our memory, PZS classification puts hiking paths among easy, demanding and
very demanding. All ferratas, regardless of difficulty, fall into very demanding paths. And precisely
because of that the official PZS classification is very deficient, because it doesn't differentiate climbing paths
by difficulty, but squeezes them all into one bag. Including all ferratas among very demanding
paths sometimes leads to such absurdity that some very demanding marked path without
protections is marked only as "demanding", well protected otherwise easy ferrata, full of
iron, as "very demanding path"! The builders of the ferrata on Gonžarjeva peč undoubtedly
were aware of the shortcomings of the current official classification of hiking paths here and offered besides
the Austrian also a proposal for a new Slovenian classification. But thereby they unintentionally caused
complete confusion, as besides wrong placement of demanding and very demanding paths for
the hardest ferratas they introduced the term "secured climbing paths", which is conceptual tautology; the name
implies that paths of difficulty A to C are actually not secured or not climbing at all.
For climbing paths (also Austrian from A to F) protections are the basic feature that distinguishes them
from other paths in the mountains. To particularly emphasize that some are secured makes no sense,
but only confuses people.
As for the Austrian ferrata classification, we must note that its main shortcoming
is placing too large a group of climbing paths of different difficulties only into two groups
(A, B). For most climbing paths in our mountains this classification is objectively unusable.
Many years ago, when I wrote the first edition of the guide to Slovenian ferratas, I used
a classification into which we can put all climbing paths by difficulty, which gradually and
evenly increases (PP 1, 2, 3…), with possible intermediate grades. According to it e.g. ferrata
on Raduha has PP 1 or max 2, Kopiščarjeva path on Prisojnik PP 4, new ferrata on
Gonžarjeva peč PP 6 or more. The differences in difficulty are clear at first glance, everyone can
decide for ascent according to their taste and abilities.