The Landscape Park Duisburg-Nord in Meiderich and its fixtures has become a unique, fascinating leisure-time adventure space for young and old. All that remained when the industrial works were closed down in 1985 was a derelict plot of waste land. It was planned to demolish the industrial buildings but this never happened. A new utilisation concept was drawn up in June 1994 and the Landscape Park Nord was created. More than one million visitors each year to the former Thyssen AG industrial site can see for themselves how the nature has reclaimed the earlier work places of thousands of workers. In the evening, they can also experience a multi-coloured miracle. The cleverly operated light installation by light artist Jonathan Park converts the rusty ruins into a magical spectacle and symbolises the structural changes – major cinema similar to the Open-Air Summer Cinema which attracts tens of thousands of viewers. The landscape park can be explored individually or on a tour accompanied by a former worker as guide, reservations can be made at the visitors' office. In either case, not to be missed is the view from blast furnace 5 which is open to all visitors. This involves climbing an iron staircase to get to the viewing platform at the top, but sporting activity is usually the objective of people visiting Germany's largest outdoor facilities. The rock climbing and alpine centre of the Duisburg section of the German alpine association (DAV), which has more than 6700 members, is the second largest club in Duisburg.
Construction of the climbing garden was started in 1990, five years after closure of the ironworks. It didn't take long for the existence of this special kind of climbing garden to become known outside the city limits. Film and radio teams from home and abroad came to report on this unique training ground in a very special environment. Creation of this "unique" location, however, initially involved a great deal of very hard work. The charge bunker walls to be used for the climbing routes were filled for decades with iron ore, coke and charges – materials used to work the blast furnaces – and were correspondingly dirty and dusty. At the start, anyone wanting to create a climbing route was required to clean the walls first using dust masks and wire brushes. This was extremely tough and arduous work as it was not possible to use any technical equipment and there was not electricity supply available. After the initial euphoria and enthusiasm for the work in the climbing garden by many active climbers, the motivation began to wane with ups and downs becoming more often and the project leaders needed to re-inspire and spur on the climbers to spend their leisure time creating the routes.
What makes the climbing garden so attractive? For example the classic "VIA FERRATA MONTE TYSSO", a 530-meter-long alpine route with ladders, suspension bridges, beam bridge and ridge traverse with A – E degrees of difficulty according to the alpine via ferrata scale.
There are more than 580 climbing tours with degrees of difficulty varying from UIAA 2-9, each with its own name: Keine Kohle mehr im Pott (No coal left in the Pott) - Duisburger Wanderweg (Duisburger hiking path)- Opas Liebling (Grandpa's favourite) – Unterwegs mit Freunden (Out with friends) - Meide die Betonspur (Avoid the concrete path) – Drama oder Schichtwechsel (Drama or change of shift) and the dry tooling wall with more than 20 routes where ice tools and crampons can be used. And expansion is continuing. Integrated into this magnificent site is the Duisburger North Park Hut, a self-service hut with 16 beds and seminar rooms.
The large variety and range of the tours is provided not least by the routes having being laid on vertical or variously sloping walls, round columns and overhanging roofs. There are suitable tours available for everyone, young or old, including power men with big biceps, the so-called "weaker sex", i.e. ladies, connoisseurs or youngsters on the children's routes "Tabaluga" and "Balu". Extreme climbers such as Stefan Glowacz, Beat Kammerlander or Reinhold Messner are also very enthusiastic about the climbing garden where more than 20.000 climbers each year make use of the outdoor site with special ambience.
The complete climbing garden covers an area of around 4500 m² and offers a climbing wall area of 7000 m² making it probably the largest artificial outdoor climbing facility in Germany, if not in Europe. All kinds of alpine climbing can be learnt and trained here. Face, crack, groove and traverse climbing as well all techniques such as setting anchors, using threads and slings, setting friends and cams, setting up belays, abseiling etc. The Duisberg landscape park is one of the few real highlights which can be enjoyed by the climbing fraternity in the Ruhrgebiet region – and not just by the climbers; strollers have fun watching the climbers.
In 2000, management of the park wrote:
"While Bavarians have the Zugspitze, our climbers have the vertical walls of the Möller bunker of the blast furnace. They feel again the hot breath of this old dinosaur as they drive their anchors into the concrete cracks of disused storage bunkers and experience bodily industrial history – just like the furnace workers earlier. Instead of producing iron, soot and dirt, they demonstrate ecological handling of the natural resources of the far away mountainside."
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