Climbing in Frankenjura

The Frankenjura is an upland in Franconia, Bavaria, a compact landscape of steep wooded slopes and limestone escarpments that sits between the Danube to the south and the Main to the north; its peaks reach roughly 600 metres and the broader upland is part of the Table Jura. That modest verticality has nonetheless hosted a distinctive technical sport-climbing culture and the visual cues that changed how climbers talk about redpointing.

Patagonia’s Rotpunkt ties that local history directly to contemporary climbing. The film uses the Frankenjura’s legacy—Kurt Albert’s original “rotpunkt,” the red circle painted at the base of a route—as an organizing idea while following Alex Megos from his German home crags to distant projects in Spain. On this page the film acts as both archive and portrait: it locates a particular conception of on-sight vs. projection within the Frankenjura’s lineage and shows how one climber re-learns patience when routes refuse to go quickly. Expect interview-backed context about the rotpunkt’s origin and on-rock sequences that contrast quick ascents with longer, stubborn projects—an approach that frames the Frankenjura less as a single destination than as a touchstone in modern sport climbing.