It’s been getting hotter and hotter here and the freezing glacial streams look more and more tempting for a quick dip to cool off. I’ve been introducing some visiting Brits and Swedes to the boulders and managed a huge sessions of repeats and then worked a 7A in the cool of the forest of Bagni until a crystal slashed my finger tip. I was so close and a new sequence discovered by one of the Swedes am sure would have guaranteed success, but with a 7B in the bag a couple of days before I am feeling quite content about how my climbing has improved.
The hot days have produced an incredible violent reaction from the surrounding mountains, vast thunder and lightning storms. The current one has raged for two days, at night the pour of the rain drums constantly into the tent and flooding the campsite. The lightning comes in blinding flashes, piercing sealed eye lids and preventing any sleep, outside the flashes can be separated into blues, reds, oranges and brilliant whites. Inside the tent it feels like some strobe lighting. You find yourself counting the seconds from the lightning flash to the thunder which machine guns around the valley its cracks echoing off the Granite walls. You count not because of some school boy science experiment, but because you earnestly want to know how close the lightning is, feeling incredible vulnerable inside the tent, unable to sleep from the rain, thunder and lightning you try not to even reach up, hoping the insulation of your rubber mat will be of some use. Even with my rational brain telling me that there are plenty of other higher and better conductors out there, your brain still goes around in circles. Suddenly those long hot and greasy days when climbing seems almost impossible seem a blessing to those longs days stuck in the campsite bar, trying not to spend anything and playing Monopoly against the computer.
With the thunder and lightning hopefully ending Yvette is coming over for a five day climbing trip, this gives me the opportunity to take in the shores of Lake Como as I head down to Milan to pick her up and with her departure my time and Val di Mello ends. It’s on to Magic Woods and those magic grades and the tedium and organisation of Switzerland.
Some Bouldering Photos from Val di Mello
Stephan on a 7A dyno
Stephan on a powerful 6B crack climb
Sam on the first 6C in Val di Mello
Chris warming up on a 5C
