Climbing in Italy

So i’ve been calling myself and Englishwoman for the past two weeks, but it seems no one under standards my Italian anyway, so probably went unnoticed. My efforts to find out how to order things in Italian with the staff at the campsite ended up with an unwanted cappuccino. To combat these problems I am keeping things as simple as possible, and just getting the names of items I need.

But I wanted to write a bit about the climbing here. The rock is Granite. Depending on where you are in the valley this can be packed with finger slicing crystals or smooth and more similar to sandstone. The problems come in all sorts, overhangs, slabs, headwalls and lots of arêtes. Being glacial formed they have one key feature! Holds get bigger as you go up. This means that top outs are great, but finding footholds to start the problems can be a nightmare. This is the place to come to sort your footwork out.

A lot of the problems have been set for the Mellobloca bouldering competition they hold here every May. This is good and bad, hundreds of new boulder problems are made every year, but the route setters seem to be mainly on the short side and love adding heinous sit starts. Being 6’ 2’’ and not 5’ 5’’ I can have enormous struggles get my arse of the ground, often not helped by the tiny crystals that are available in always the wrong place for your feet.

Regarding climbing for everyone the majority of climbs are in the sixes and above. Although there are plenty of great fives you would probably run out or be pushed into some of the highball ones if you were here for over a week. My climbing has gradually improved and have ticked a few 7a’s and a 7a+, am close on a couple of 7b’s and put together the moves on a 7c this morning, but now need to connect it. On the other hand there are still quite a few 6a’s which I haven’t completed.

As an overview most of the problems require quite a bit of effort and thought to get. There are very few which are a give away at the grade and you will almost certainly find some where your morphology will help (read I managed to lank my way through a couple of problems) and many where your morphology will be the biggest burden in the world. But in the end every problem is very rewarding and satisfying, whether it is 6a or 7a.