#21 Lara Neumeier

“For me, it’s not so much a single route in Franken but the whole package that’s in the front row here: relaxed atmosphere, climbing hard and good company”, Lara Neumeier says when asked about her favourite line. She has lived in Nürnberg for a few years and she enjoys her sessions in the Frankenjura; though she doesn’t get to spend a lot of time on these crags - for her heart lies in the mountains after all.

Born in Allgäu and having grown up in Oberbayern, a stone’s throw from Austria, the Alps have shaped Lara’s everyday life since childhood. Her family has always done all sorts of mountain activities: hiking, skiing, mountain biking; in the summertime also climbing, mostly on Italian and French crags: that’s where it all began for her.

At the age of 11, a school climbing program pulled Lara into a gym, where she’d train and play with her peers. Two years later she was already climbing in her first competitions, though even this early in her life she soon noticed that what really interested her was the nature experience of outside cragging rather than competing on plastic. Throughout her teens she moved towards the outdoors again, which also meant gaining some multipitch experience on easy routes that she’d climb with her uncle. By now her focus lies completely on rock, mainly on proud alpine walls.

Lara was 18 when she discovered the world of more demanding alpine climbing. She had just done her A-levels when friends showed her what doing difficult lines in the mountains can be like. During this period she also got to know the prodigy Babsi Zangerl: an important friendship for Lara’s development. Babsi gave her a crash course in trad climbing, which has gone a long way, a skill that Lara has perfected and used extensively since.

A couple of years of hard multipitch climbing combined with trad adventures were the perfect basis for big walls. In 2023, Lara stood at the foot of El Cap in Yosemite National Park for the first time. Her partner for the upcoming climb: Babsi. The ladies climbed El Corazon together, which Lara describes as the perfect introduction to this mythical granite rock formation - and big wall climbing as such. For Lara, it’s still one of her most unforgettable ascents - all the way up there together with El Niño, also an El Cap line, and a still fresh tick: the nails hard trad route Psychogramm at Bürser Platte in Austria - hers being also the first female ascent of this 2014 Alex Luger line.

“Who’s been there once, knows: Yosemite doesn’t let go of you”, says Lara, who keeps a sharp focus on trad, big wall and alpine routes, while casually ticking off some of Franken’s harder climbs, whenever she enters the forests. Such well-known routes as Cringer, Battle Cat, and Mr. Incredible - to name but a few - are already on her list.​

Her favourite crag in Franken has to be Hängender Stein, which she has been sweeping steadily between studies, training sessions in the gyms and big days out in the mountains. The reason? It’s a long wall, where one can climb hard and get decent mileage done both at once.

While Lara doesn’t really have a favourite route in Franken, in her opinion you can’t really go wrong with the classics here. Chasin’ the Trane. her 50RP route, is one of Franken’s finest and a nice memory of Lara’s from long before she moved to Nürnberg for her studies. As most of her other ascents here, it was a spontaneous one, ticked off in one short trip, without much projecting effort, but surely with grace and confidence characteristic to her style. She wanted to climb Chasin’ because of its historic importance and it worked out during a short outing with a friend, leaving behind a memory of a day well-spent.

Such days are exactly what Lara associates Franken with: loose atmosphere and good times with friends in the beautiful forests, plus flow in the renowned routes.

A little behind the scenes insight: the black and white photos on the left are early poster tests.
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What keeps her so in love with climbing and the mountains are the intensive experiences: the adventure, the unknown, the deep connection to nature. She is motivated by long days on the walls, during which she can push herself both physically and mentally, which is in turn rewarded with unforgettable moments that stay with her for a long time and keep the stoke high for training in the city.

Thank you, Lara, for being
​a part of 50RP!