Abandoned Kansai

In the 1990s ski jumping was super popular in Germany thanks to successful athletes like Jens Weisflog, Dieter Thoma, Martin Schmitt, and Sven Hannawald – major events were even broadcasted on popular TV stations. Kind of a surprise to me as it is a sport hardly anybody actively does themselves – every kid plays soccer at one point, maybe not in a team, but in school or on the street. But who actually does ski jumping? Only a few thousand people worldwide. In the past 20 years interest went down a bit, despite actives like Severin Freund and Andreas Wellinger continuously being successful. In addition to dwindling interest, climate change is a threat to ski jumping as it has left some ski resorts and ski jumping hill without enough snow to run them with financial success.

The 624m high Katzenbuckel (which translates to something like cat hump) is the highest peak of a lovely low mountain range full of history called Odenwald, roughly stretching from Darmstadt to Heidelberg (north/south) and to Wertheim in the east. In 1949 the Skizunft Katzenbuckel (skiing guild Katzenbuckel) was founded, a year later the first ski jumping hill was constructed, which allowed jump of up to 15 meters. The hill was steadily enlarged and 10 years the length of the original jumps was more than doubled. In 1976 a brand-new ski jump was built, including a 17-meter-high tower. Fueled by the German jumping success of the 90s a new plastic covered ski jumping hill with a steel tower was inaugurated in 1995 – also featuring two junior hills for young talents. It’s a bit unclear when the Schanze was finally closed – there are several reports from the 00s about activities there, but it seems like they started to fizzle out in the 2010s. If not dead already at the time, Corona definitely killed it as there are plenty of reports about the abandoned Schanze from 2020/21 on, when hiking became a popular activity during the years of social distancing. Those reports mostly were from local hikers, not urban explorers… so depending on which group you are looking at, I was either rather late or perfectly on time to the party, which I am fine with, given that I wasn’t able to go back home to Germany for several years.

Exploring the Katzenbuckel-Sprungsschanze was super easy and became a little family event. There was a free parking lot for hikers and other nature lovers just a few hundred meters away, which brings me to why I’m rather open with information about the Schanze: It was probably the busiest place I’ve ever explored due to two hiking trails running through – one behind the tower, one through the landing area. Even on a cold and damp winter day there were several dozen people walking past or through, some also had a closer look. Outdoor explorations far away from civilization are among my favorites, so despite the weather I really enjoyed this one… especially after exploring half a dozen ski-jumping hills in Japan, for example the *Overgrown Ski-Jumping Hill* and the spectacular *Hokkaido Ski-Jumping Hill*.

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