PROJECT LAMA

Following the footsteps of David Lama

The impressively steep Laserz south face in Lienz, East Tyrol clocks in at 2,400 meters above sea level and is one of the last left behind by exceptional climber David Lama. The climbing icon opened the route from 2013 to 2014 with a few partners and a lot of soloing and climbed all pitches except for the key length. Now, ten years later, a 23-year-old from Pitztal & Salewa athlete Louis Gundolf has managed to complete the project and free climb the entire route. 

“It was one of those projects where I initially thought I had no chance of completing. There were some scary falls, as the intermediate belays were sometimes very far apart - my longest fall was 30 metres,” recalls Louis Gundolf. “I like to challenge myself and push myself to the limit so that I can look back on all my projects with pride later on. Even here on the steep Laserzwand, it got easier from climb to climb - until the ascent was successful and I was able to complete everything free climbing!”

Project Lama, as Louis Gundolf calls it is a route rated 8c+, which is very poorly secured and has overhanging terrain throughout. There are just four bolts (2x in 8c+ / 2x in 8b+) on around 250 metres of wall, each with eight pitches, that are mostly secured with crampons, friends and pitons - some of these are from David Lama himself.

It is not just the lack of protection that makes the Lama project a real challenge, but it is also a very technical climb that requires several movements that are not normally used in alpine climbing, such as high heel holds. “I normally avoid them completely because they are simply just dangerous. If your foot slips behind the rope, you could fall headfirst. Because of this risk, I went with good colleagues and belayers who know what they are doing and whom I trust. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the KIOTs in East Tyrol for all their support and the warm welcome into your small community”, explains Louis Gundolf.

There is one thing that helped Louis Gundolf through all these difficulties: visualisation. “I map out the route with all its details and before I go to sleep, I memorise the topos very precisely. I try to remember all of the sections and straddle steps to figure out where I can take a short break,” reveals the young climber. “I have to climb everything freely, and that is the difficulty. In the beginning, I just never quite managed to recover from the previous part of the wall.”

Following in the footsteps of the climbing icon

Project Lama is not the first project Louis Gundolf has attempted that David Lama also has. Back in 2021, Gundolf completed the ‘Safety Discussion’ route with Jonathan Lechner, a route that is known for its exposure and is notorious as a mental challenge. Louis Gundolf was one of three people in the world to complete it - the first, of course, was David Lama. “He was and still is my role model - he has achieved outstanding results in sport climbing and has also conquered the most difficult alpine routes on rock, ice or in mixed climbing. David Lama simply was an exceptional talent!”

Louis Gundolf cannot say whether he will continue to follow in the footsteps of David Lama in the future, but one thing is clear, he knows that rock climbing will remain a long-term focus. “At the moment, it feels good to be outside, but whether I will ever climb in a competition again is something I am leaving open. Time will tell, maybe the motivation will come back or maybe it won’t. I would like to open my own routes, but that is very time-consuming. It is important to me to really climb them from the bottom to the top. I already have a few projects in mind, maybe even here on the Laserzwand in East Tyrol.”