Lake Como and Onwards

Me in Val di Mello
I think I have been spoilt in the last few months when visiting cities, so many had kept their original medieval and Georgian sectors that Como after which Lake Como is named just felt more of the same. Narrow pedestrianised streets with tall thick walled buildings, many with murals and sculptured facades, small cafe lined squares surrounding elegant drinking fountains. The centre piece of the town was the Duomo, this cathedral built over many centuries, its interior features dark gothic designs with a renaissance exterior. The Roman writers and residents of Como Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Older guard the west facade.
Lake Como and the Duomo

But this is all that really captivated me about the city. The cafe’s charges extortionate prices for their coffee and waiters looked bemused at my lack of tipping. Accustomed as I am to the refusal of any tips up in Val di Melo; Yvette tried to tip a Euro for a lunch we had and ended up with a one Euro postcard. The waterfront of Como was rammed with tourist boats and whilst still pretty and elegant didn’t hold the charm of the Canals and water ways of Annecy. But this is all partly my fault, I chose Como as a stopover on my way to Milan to pick up Yvette and could have easily chosen Belagio or some of the countless prettier towns on the western shore, although these would have been a bit of a drive.

The Gothic Interior

With Yvette’s visit came the end of my trip to Italy, I showed her the boulders, routes and beautiful valleys and she fell for this little bit of Italy as well. Dropping her off at Colico station I headed north to the Splugen pass. This tight mountain road, zig zagged up snow capped mountains, cars going up with their engines over heating in first and second and clutches stretched to the max and cars going down with burning brake pads. At the highest point you pass over the border and into Switzerland, waved through by a Swiss border guard whose only English was “Bye Bye”.

Rainy Como

But Switzerland immediately makes me yawn, good roads, quite ancient mountain villages with not an inhabitant to be seen and not a shop or cafe in sight; expensive food, expensive everything and completely lacking that atmosphere that you get in almost all other European countries. On the plus side the campsite is cheap at €3 a night, whilst for that you just get a porta loo and a small stream to wash yourself, clothes and dishes and drink from and with everything so expensive you quickly stop spending anything that isn’t necessary, well maybe a bit of that Swiss Chocolate.

The bouldering is just across the river on a steep mossy forest, the boulders are jumbled all on top of one another, making the landings generally awful. Walking around is a bit dicey with lots of holes to fall into and slippery slopes leading down to the river. The boulder problems are in general excellent, if all in the higher grades. The quality of climbers here is amazing, so many strong Euro Wads, climbing in the 8’s. I was invited out with Katy Whittaker and Ryan Pascal for a session, being joined later by Tyler Landerman. This was my first taste of really hard climbing, Katy ticked an amazing 7C, while I pulled through most the moves, needing to come back for the last move which apparently shouldn’t be the crux. Ryan and I pulled onto Jack the Chipper a very hard 7C+, and was quite pleased to see us both failing on the same move, although I’m sure without a dodgy finger he could have cleaned up.

The bad part of the area is the landings, being on my own there is little for me to do and I have to team up with other climbers and join in what they want to do. Being one of the weaker guys here that generally means throwing myself at seemingly impossible problems. It’s hard to find a project that I can work on my own, but have set my sights on Supernova a hard 7C on the Bruno boulder beside the river. One thing this place has done is to raise my game up to the next level.

Mountains around the Splugen Pass

Thunder and Lightning

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

Raphael on a roadside 6c

Sam on the first 6C in Val di Mello

Chris warming up on a 5C

Val di Bagni

It’s hot here, so hot. At weekends it gets busier and busier as the crowds escape from Milan which apparently is even hotter. The rivers still carry some of their glacial cool with them and plummet the temperature by a good 10 degrees, making bouldering next to them a pleasure, but away from the rivers you can’t last more than 20 minutes. I have taken to starting climbing at 5.00, just as the evening cool comes in.

Val di Bagni

But there is one hidden gem, Val di Bagni, breaking west out of Val di Massino instead of east to Val di Melo this Valley is the opposite of Melo, where Melo is wide meadows, with stone villages, sporadic forests and boulders catching the full glare of the sun. Bagni is tall dark Beech and Pine forests, glacial streams pouring through it off the alpine summit of Piz Baldie into a raging torrent at the bottom. The forest floor is covered in moss and the forest is dark and very cool. The boulders are often very high here, making a fine line between a boulder problem and a solo. As with much of the area many of the problems are reverting back to nature, simply not enough boulders to keep the moss at bay. The best problems tend to remain clean, but I would bring a wire brush next time I visit.

More Val di Bagni

The cool of the forest has allowed me to release a bit more energy into the bouldering and feeling back on form managed a 6c+. It was typical of the local problems, low sit start with one tiny foothold which this time was in a position I could use. One hand on the sloping arête and other crimping a small undercling, then a lightning slap up to another crimp for the right hand, reposition my body and throw again with my right for the finishing hold and topping it out. The perfect combination of static control from my left arm and dynamic snatches with my right!

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of me in action on the boulders as it is hard to climb and take photos of myself. I thought of getting the tripod out and using the self timer, but this would look blatantly posed. So I’ve only got more photos of the scenery, sorry for yet more alpine streams, but hopefully this set of photos will illustrate the difference between Bagni and Val di Mello.

I seem to have written this blog in two parts and haven’t been able to think of away to link them without rewriting the above, so just going to launch into the next section.

Every fourth day I have as a rest day, this rest day I should decided I should be a bit more active. With so many mountains around there is loads of good walks. So up I headed to Bagni after a sleepless night thanks to the tent load of kids and a dog which are camped feet away from my head. I soon found a path signposted to the refugio of Omio, a nice trail with the odd painted boulders so you don’t get lost and even a time estimate on a sign of two and a half hours. For those of you who know me, years of canoeing and climbing have done a tremendous amount to unnuture my legs, and bean poles is an apt description. Unknown to me this hike took me nicely from the valley floor of Bagni as 1200 metres up to the refugio Omio at 2500 metres; it was one long hard slog uphill the whole way. I only made it by sheer will power as my fitness and muscles had given up somewhere down in the forests. The estimate of two and half hours was spot on for me, although someone with legs could probably do it in half the time.

The Refugio at 2500m

My only saving grace was the walking poles I had bought last year when Yvette and I went to Switzerland. They helped a tremendous amount to pull me up the hills and even more to soften the impact on the long two hour descent. I probably won’t do this sort of masochistic exercise every rest day, but for a one off, being able to walk through forested valleys, into the alpine meadows then into the rough highlands and see the nature slowly change is quite remarkable and probably only possible in a walk which increases in altitude so quickly. On route it is pretty much just you and nature, the odd ‘fitter’ walker would amble past and apart from a long green snake which slithered out of my way and one herd of cows I was pretty much alone.

Walkers approaching the Refugio

Enough of the romanticisms! Reckon my legs are going to ache something terrible tomorrow.

Scenic Val di Mello

I sort of told a half truth when I said I was staying at Val di Mello, I’m actually about a mile down the valley next to the Sasso Remano boulder. I took my first proper trip into Val di Mello today as a rest day, hiking up the valley as the road runs out pretty early on. Now, I know I made a big thing about how amazing my current location was, but I think the actual Val di Mello has come up trumps. I don’t think I need to go into detail after my last post, it’s just more of the same, rivers, waterfalls, meadows, cliffs and mountains. But wow, I’ll let the following photos do the talking. You might want to click on them as I don’t think they appear very small in the browser and you might want to appreciate them a bit larger.

But enough of the scenery, the people here make it just as much an amazing place as the views. On my first night I wandered up to San Martino for a beer at the local bar, unfortunately my small change didn’t quite reach the needed €2, and the bar didn’t have change for €50. It was simple to them, just pay tomorrow. So up I went the next evening to pay back my debt and visit another cafe. Unfortunately I timed my trip dreadful and the skies completely opened. I sat there hoping for a gap in the rain to dash the mile back to camp, but it never came. As always the locals had the answer, an umbrella, I was on my, return my umbrella the next day.

My rest day hiking up the Val di Mello also couldn’t have been made more cheerful by the locals, everyone stopped to chat in broken English and Italian (my Italian is slowly improving). Lunch was at a refugio where I just ordered the local food with the help of my phrase book. The local stonemason told me I had to have the local wine with the meal as it was the best and he nosed through my climbing guidebook through the meal pointing at climbers he knew and areas which were very good. The meal was exactly what you would expect, nothing fancy; a starter of cheese and salami with bread and a main of thick creamy / cheesy polenta with a bit of meat on the side. The wine was coarse and acidic, helping me not to drink too much and cutting the richness of the Polenta which was so filling I had to leave some. So as not to upset the cook I made sure to learn ‘very good’ in Italian. To finish the meal the Stonemason who seemed to live at the refugio gave me a climber’s rate of €10 for the whole meal of starter, main and half a litre of wine. Might have to make this trip part of the weekly regime!

Over the Alps and into Italy

Our last few days in France passed very slowly, we moved from Annecy to Cluses near Chamonix, a good location for me to start my journey to Italy and also to drop Yvette at Geneva airport. The bad weather continued, although we managed to get some climbing in and whilst the weather held took a scenic drive along some of Europe’s highest roads to take in the snow capped mountains.

The Mont Blanc Range, Grey and Misty

Monday was Yvette’s final day and also my thirtieth birthday, not quite the way I envisaged my thirtieth, but it was the way we planned it. I dropped Yvette off at Geneva airport and promptly had the car searched by the French police on re-entry into France. Apparently a single guy in a British car is suspicious. After numerous questions in broken French and English about where I was going and where I had been I was let go. The only good part of the day so far was that it was sunny, but as I entered the Alps a massive storm sat directly over Cluses, flooding the little campsite and making any possibility of cooking disappear. I opted for a table for one at the local pizza restaurant and then a beer in town, it was only nine o’clock when I returned; probably the earliest to bed I have ever been on my birthday.

I left as soon as I could the next day, In front of me loomed Mont Blanc, with its snow capped peaks and glaciers stretching down into the valley it was magnificent, but you couldn’t help but notice the factories and warehouses littered on either side of the road. I left the French Alps through the Mont Blanc tunnel, stunned by the scenery, but disappointed by the ramshackle towns and industrial estates in the valleys. Once through the Tunnel and Italy the architecture changed, although the industrial estates still littered the valleys picturesque castles loomed on top of hills and minareted churches clung to the side of the mountains. The driving became much more unpredictable, road works suddenly loomed up without warnings and you always had to be alert to what lane to go in. Drivers tended to start their manoeuvres without looking, although they always seemed to notice you before causing a collision. My Sat Nav worked perfectly until I had the only tricky section around Milan, somehow I scrapped through.

Routes in Sasso Remano, the largest boulder in Europe

Next was lake Como, with the mountains crashing down into its shores I made a note to get back here on a rest day to have a look around. Soon I was winding my way up the mountains to San Martino and the Val di Mello. This is what you want alpine valleys to look like. Lush flowering meadows, a mountain stream cascading through the middle, steep granite cliffs on either side and in the distance snowed capped peaks with their Glaciers winding down to the ancient villages in the valley. Suddenly everything felt good again, and it was sunny. This is going to be my base for the next month, climbing the boulder fields on the valley floor and chilling in the alpine villages. I’m enjoying it already.

Bouldering in Val di Melo