Climbing.com - 09/2007

To the uninitiated, navigating the northern Frankenjura´s scattered cliffs might seem a bit... well, staggering. Frankenjura Extreme is a lively little guidebook that showcases the venerable German sport crags´ 2,000 best climbs, the first to do so entirely in English. With straightforward grayscale topos and terse, no-BS route descriptions like "long moves on small pockets" and "I´ve never seen anybody do this one," this 200-plus-page offering from Sebastian Schwertner slays with full-color action photos and great images from the sport-climbing vault, such as that of Kurt Albert tipping a beer stein while free soloing Devil´s Crack, and Wolfgang Güllich on Wallstreet, the worlds first 5.14b. Intuitive, Euro-style crag-info and a grade breakdown for each cliff complete the package, letting you plan your limestone sportklettern vacation.