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| I'm on the 5c second pitch of Apparizione Del Cristo Verde |
James Thacker, Alison Culshaw and I decided to go to Valle dell'Orco in Italy, for 2 days to try out their famous cracks and slabs. It was James's third visit, but my first, so I started off very cautiously. The first climb (Apparizione Del Cristo Verde) was a slab climb predominantly, and a mix of bolted and trad. The slab climbing is as always about trusting friction and keeping your nerve!! James took the first 5a pitch. I really enjoyed the second 5b, then James went on to finish with the 6a, 6b and 4b. The 6b was the most memorable pitch of the day, with a real test of trust in friction. How many granite crystals are required to keep a shoe stuck onto a steep slab of granite? For your hands you could either try to crimp on a single granite crystal, or palm the rock to try to stick to many crystals - fun!
After some food, we went on to do a few pitches of Nautilus - which is a different style of climbing completely. James had already done the first few pitches previously (before being rained off), so we got to his high point and he carried on. This happened to be inside the cliff - with a bit of traditional chimneying to get up the wide crack. Later in the sun again the climbing became more crack orientated, and so by the end of the day we felt like we had done most styles of climbing - but not yet any fist jams or finger locks - there's always tomorrow ...
FYI - the campsite is great with a trout pond, fully stocked. A BBQ site built on the campsite (for cooking the trout) and a bar for snacks or evening beers (or for breakfast as one man did). Excellent Italian Pizza down the road too.
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| Before the little overlap on the second pitch |
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| James on the 6a third pitch |
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| James on the 6b 4th pitch |
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| Alison on the 6b 4th pitch |
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| 6b, pitch 4. The hand and foot holds are only small crystals |
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| Slide your hand down until it has the most crystals to get some friction - trust the feet will stick |
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| James on the 4b 5th pitch |
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| A photo to show the campsite, far below. Not too busy this weekend at all. You can see our tents on the left. The pond is stocked with trout - so the whole valley seems to come to pich up their fresh fish for supper. A new bar has just recently opened - brilliant |
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| This is the much easier upper 4b pitch - you can almost walk up it, not quite, but almost. |
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| Walking into the mountain to access the upper pitches of Nautilus |
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| James leading on Nautilus |
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| Alison busy chimneying on Nautilus |
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| After the chimney, there are some awkward moves to the belay - I'm making full use of my leg length |
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| Alison on the awkward moves |
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| The next pitch again has some great moves, lower down there is a great rock-over, but here Alison is tranfering from the right crack to the left |
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| A Brit on Elisir D'Incastro - climb of the cover photo of the guide book. This photo is about 2 moves below the cover photo |
Good, a test of their nav skills, the obvious group of 5 in front, can you see the group of 4 girls in the background on the RHS.. Nobody really got lost! Well done...
