Two weeks ago I wrote here that hochseilgaerten.com listed 103 parks. Today it lists 375 🌲
👉 https://www.hochseilgaerten.com/
375 high ropes courses, climbing parks and forest adventure parks across four countries: 252 in Germany, 86 in Austria, 25 in Czechia and 12 in Slovenia, spread over 44 regions. All on one map, filterable by region, age, height, price — and by what is actually open today.
How 103 parks became 375
The biggest jump came from Germany. I had assumed the large parks would be easy to find. They were not. Search for climbing parks and you find the ones that buy advertising. The others sit in open geodata, in OpenStreetMap, in tourism directories, or on a website that has not changed since 2014.
So I went through all sixteen federal states, and through Czechia in full. Every park was checked individually: does it still exist, is it actually a high ropes course rather than a climbing tower, is the location right. Sixteen candidates dropped out again during that check — one park had closed for good and its domain had since been taken over by someone else, three others were climbing towers, one was a duplicate.
That is the unglamorous part of the work, and it is the part that separates a directory from a list of links.
Why the number keeps growing every day
But the real reason the site changes daily is not new parks. It is the operators.
At the end of August I wrote to every operator whose address I could find — 332 out of 375. In German, Czech and Slovenian, depending on where the park is. The request was simple: look at your entry, correct whatever is wrong, and send me photos if you have any.
The replies are the best thing that could have happened to this project. An operator in the Sauerland made clear that his park is not open year-round but from April to November — the hours on the website were the daily schedule, not the season. Another in North Rhine-Westphalia explicitly did not want prices and opening hours in the directory because they change too often; his entry now points to his own site instead. A climbing park near Leipzig sent a Word document with eight comments and cleared up the claim that there was a low-season discount — there is none, but there is one for booking ahead. And in Franconia it turned out that one park simply has no fixed opening hours at all.
Every one of those replies makes the directory more accurate. By now 286 parks carry a price, 298 an age or height limit, 265 their season dates. And 28 parks show real photos that their operators released to me — instead of the neutral illustration that stands wherever I still have nothing.
What this changes for parents
The practical question before a day out is rarely "which climbing parks exist?" but "what can we reach from here, is it open today, and is my child even allowed up there?".
That is exactly what the home page answers. It estimates your location from your network address — no prompt, no GPS — sorts by distance, and shows for every park whether it is open on that day. One click on "nearby", one click on "open today", and 375 parks become the three that actually qualify. The minimum age is on the card, not three clicks deep on the operator's site.
There is also a "with photos" filter and one for accessibility. On the latter I am strict: it only shows parks where the operator has confirmed accessibility themselves. Anything else would be a promise that somebody on site has to keep, not me.
What is still missing
Plenty. 110 parks give no season dates because they only keep them in a booking calendar. 43 operators have no address I could find and therefore could not be asked at all. And the rest of the photos are simply not there yet — 28 out of 375 is a start, nothing more.
Then there is the kind of sad news that belongs in a directory like this: a climbing park in Brandenburg closes on 26 September after 24 years. That now stands in its entry, so nobody drives out there for nothing.
Join in
If you run a park and your entry is wrong, incomplete or missing a picture: there is a form on every page for exactly that, and somebody does read office@hochseilgaerten.com. The same goes for parents who found something on site other than what the page said. Every correction gets worked in — usually the same day.
The whole site is available in German, English, Slovenian, Czech and Italian. It costs nothing, it shows no advertising, and no entry is for sale — operators can upgrade their entry, but that never changes the order.
