Big sea cliff facing the water 30 km north of Stockholm. Ryssgraven has plenty of easy slab routes which makes this crag a perfect choice for beginners and courses. The easiest routes (grades 4-5) generally have a lot of ledges of different sizes which makes the climbing relaxed and calm. The routes are mainly between 10 to 20 meters long, but some are up to 25 meters.
Quite many routes are fully bolted these days, but here and there the bolts can be a bit spread, or you might need to place some gear. A couple of nice low-angle cracks with no bolts at all are on the menu as well, which is good if you want to practise traditional climbing and placing your own gear. The anchors at the left part of the wall are easy to access if you want to rig a top rope.
The quality of the rock is generally great and is for the most part very solid and smooth, this could also make the climbing a bit sensitive and slippery on some of the routes.
There is a walking bridge at the bottom of the wall that makes it easy to access all the routes along the waterline. Most of the routes start from the ground or from the bridge, but a couple of routes start from a smaller ledge at the far right of the wall. The ledge is easily accessible via a fixed rope. There is also a bigger ledge higher up on the right side of the wall where there are some shorter routes. This ledge is accessible via an easy downclimb (2a), but you can also rappel down. There is a picnic table at the foot of the cliff behind some trees where you can sit comfortably in the shade and eat your lunch.
The view over the water and the surrounding areas are very nice, although the motorway is a little disturbing. The wall is facing southeast and stays sunny until about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It's mostly open for the sun, but you can get some shade from trees when climbing at the left part of the wall. The more open and compact parts of the wall dry quickly after rain and winter climbing could be possible on sunny and calm days.
Back in the days Ryssgraven was considered uninteresting because of its mossy slabs, and the few "steeper" sections were divided by ledges. The first reported routes where made by Daniel Bidner in 1980. He made some shorter trad routes on the more accessible parts of the wall. Then nothing happend until mid 90s when the sections over the water became to tempting. Some traditional routes where made over the water, and by the end of the 90s a couple of really nice bolted routes were made as well. Now the wall started to get some visits even though you had to rappel down to some small ledges just above the water to get to the best and hardest ones.
But it wasn't until Christer Åstrand (an "old" famous local climber) started to clean up all that slabby face and made those easy bolted routes, that the crowds really started to come. And of course, he made the fantastic walking bridge at the bottom of the crag.
