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.

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!