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Chockstone Forum - Crag & Route Beta

Crag & Route Beta

 Page 2 of 3. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 56
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Author
Dolomites
One Day HEro
29-Nov-2010
5:39:53 PM
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that after 2 months I had "fear-of-dying fatigue syndrome". Symptoms include the 1000 yard stare, muttered questioning of "why do we do this shit?" , and a strong urge to go clip some bolts in France.......which is exactly what I did.

Make sure you do the 'dream routes' reasonably early, cause you'll get to a point where you just don't feel like risking your life anymore

nmonteith
29-Nov-2010
5:42:39 PM
My last piece of advice. Don't go starting up a via ferrata with a storm brewing. They are one giant lightning rod.
bones
29-Nov-2010
6:05:52 PM
On 29/11/2010 nmonteith wrote:
>My last piece of advice. Don't go starting up a via ferrata with a storm
>brewing. They are one giant lightning rod.

one of my fondest memories in the dolomites was sitting on a refugio deck during a lightning storm watching the ferrata cables light up like fireworks
Cam McKenzie
29-Nov-2010
7:52:13 PM
Thanks Mr Hero,
Was hoping you'd pipe up.

Any recommendations of which routes should be on the must do list?

Perhaps a couple of months in the dolomites and then maybe Verdon or Riglos. So many options.

nmonteith
29-Nov-2010
8:09:50 PM
Riglos = rad. Be careful with the family wandering around the base. After one day climbing there I went and bought a helmet. Flying cobblestones! Great trad and sport and good cultural highlights nearby. There is good alpine granite nearby as well.
Cam McKenzie
29-Nov-2010
9:02:50 PM
Sounds good, might hit you up for some beta on it Neil. There's something strangely appealing about wrestling up a massive field of potatoes and pumpkins.
hipster
29-Nov-2010
9:28:02 PM
The stuff of vegetarian dreams!
rod
30-Nov-2010
6:25:46 AM
Based on time of year:

drop Dolomites to only SOME of the trip
add Verdon for sure
add Tarn for sure
add SOME and I only mean SOME Cham Trad, opposite side of the valley for some sport multi's is recommended provided you're looking at 6b or higher (lower than that its pretty ordinary)
add Grimsel
add Engelhorn
2 days in Val d'Aoste for Paretoni (Bega) and Lomasti (Silvie) are highly recommended once it starts to cool off (October)
late in look at Font, great for the family thing

Riglos is good but it can be a bit out of the way, if you're stretched for time there's conglomerate in the big red cliff opposite Les Callanques, Greece and in Vars. Limestone everywhere to the point you get really fussy.

Outside of those there's shedloads of granite, sandstone & gneiss all over the place to cover a day's climbing on the way to elsewhere...pick and choose according to location.

The States is likely cheaper.

Have a great time.

I have more time again in February, pick my brains then if you remember.
One Day Hero
30-Nov-2010
10:12:14 AM
On 29/11/2010 Cam McKenzie wrote:
>
>Any recommendations of which routes should be on the must do list?
>
Yeah, everything (did the 3 routes in the german guide) at Torre Venecia was fantastic........except getting caught in a lightning storm! (2nd closest I felt to death while in the Doli's). Good rock quality, friendlier feel of the hut, plus a bit of remoteness were the main selling points.

Over on Torre Trieste, there are supposed to be good routes too (and it looks killer)....why didn't we do anything there?

Tofana seemed really chossy to me, looks amazing and super lines but was the closest I felt to dying the whole time......apparently the grade VII is fine but was too chicken after the reaming I received on the VI. Cinque Torre is a nice place to spend the days when its not raining (yet) but too suss to commit to big stuff.

Tre Cima........sigh! Awesome spot, cool routes, but too famous for its own good. It's the Italian version of Uluru, Three Sisters, and Araps at easter, all rolled into one. An over-crowded, over-priced, over-commercialized shithole. Yellow Edge was a bit disappointing (amazing line but the route doesn't go up the line!) Comici north face was a way cool route, but I had 3 shouting matches and a very near fist fight........fuchin' germans!

Sella.....did an amazing sport route, 10ish pitches, very sustained around 23-24, called Oro Carbone? I don't know where to find info on the alpine sports routes, its worth trying to suss out. The rock was awesome (despite a 15m whip I took with a big jug in my hands) and climbing was cooler than any of the 'classical' routes (it just lacked the history and mega-line). If I go back to the Doli's, I'll be searching out a lot more of this sort of stuff.

Did a bunch of other routes in other areas.....those brain cells seem to have since passed on. Its all blended into one big, beautiful, scary, chossy blob.

Marmolada.......never made it. By the time I thought I was prepared for the massive routes, I didn't feel like dying any more. There's some major ballache with the descent too, you have to cross a glacier (crampons?), then ride a cablecar ($$$?)

Hope that helps a bit......it was 10yrs ago, so don't trust it too much. A lot may have changed (bet there's heaps of good multipitch sport now), and I might have rose-tinted some things............there is a faint memory of thinking I was going to die on the descent off the Comici.......and the descent off the Pillastro (Tofana) :/

nmonteith
30-Nov-2010
10:34:37 AM
Remember Europe is a sport climbing mecca - so make sure you at least give some of the famous crags a go. Ignoring them would be like going to Arapiles and only doing sport routes. You may be pleasantly surprised how exciting (ie runout!) many of the sport routes are!
bones
30-Nov-2010
10:42:01 AM
On 30/11/2010 One Day Hero wrote:
>>
>Marmolada.......never made it. By the time I thought I was prepared for
>the massive routes, I didn't feel like dying any more. There's some major
>ballache with the descent too, you have to cross a glacier (crampons?),
>then ride a cablecar ($$$?)
>

True, but the locals don't consider it too serious. I was overtaken by a runner in shorts and a singlet on the way up the ridge of Marmolada. Then, on the way down another crazy local talked me into taking the fast option down the glacier, riding a small plastic 'sled'. "Don't worry" he said, "I'll tell you when there is a crevasse coming!"

nmonteith
30-Nov-2010
10:42:51 AM
There is some ok single pitch sport climbing in the Dolomites which is good on wet days as its overhung. 'Chipped and drilled to perfection' is how the guidebook we had described it.

One Day Hero
30-Nov-2010
10:48:45 AM
On 30/11/2010 bones wrote:
>
>True, but the locals don't consider it too serious. I was overtaken by
>a runner in shorts and a singlet on the way up the ridge of Marmolada.
>Then, on the way down another crazy local talked me into taking the fast
>option down the glacier, riding a small plastic 'sled'. "Don't worry" he
>said, "I'll tell you when there is a crevasse coming!"

Yeah, no doubt its fine with a bit of beta. Did you do that classic route with the Messner "solution pocket" finish? Any good? This is one of the dream routes I really wanted at the start, but was too fear-fatigued at the end to give a shit. Will do it one day.
One Day Hero
30-Nov-2010
10:50:40 AM
Nice photo Neil. Where is it? I don't remember anything that steep and juggy at Cinque Torre.

nmonteith
30-Nov-2010
10:57:56 AM
All the names totally escape me - they all sound the same. It was at the base of some tower in the Sella group. We found it accidentally walking past it on the way to do a via ferrata. That night it started raining so we bived in the cave at the base and climbed there all the next day. There was name and grade tags painted along the base so we didn't need a guide. This cliff actually wasn't chipped at all - but we also climbed on another sport crag at Sella that was heavily chipped on certain routes and even had gym holds embedded in the cliff. Really well disguised so you couldn't see them from the ground.
bones
30-Nov-2010
11:02:18 AM
On 30/11/2010 nmonteith wrote:
>All the names totally escape me - they all sound the same. It was at the
>base of some tower in the Sella group. We found it accidentally walking
>past it on the way to do a via ferrata. That night it started raining so
>we bived in the cave at the base and climbed there all the next day. There
>was name and grade tags painted along the base so we didn't need a guide.
>This cliff actually wasn't chipped at all - but we also climbed on another
>sport crag at Sella that was heavily chipped on certain routes and even
>had gym holds embedded in the cliff. Really well disguised so you couldn't
>see them from the ground.

Looks like Citta Dei Sassi (city of rocks) - sport climbing below a great ferrata on Passo Pordoi?
One Day Hero
30-Nov-2010
11:13:47 AM
Good Ferrata, good sport routes, sounds like a girlfriend compatible spot. Is there a separate guidebook for each of the sport areas, or a "best of the Doli's"? One for the Ferratas? We only had the 'big, bad trad guide'

I'd quite like to take the mrs. on a non-death doli's trip, it really is beautiful over there.

nmonteith
30-Nov-2010
11:22:36 AM
I have a feeling we didn't have a guidebook at all - i think we may have been taking sneaky photos of the guidebook topos in the shop and using that. I honestly don't remember having a paper guidebook. Maybe I had stuff downloaded from the net?? That's probably why all the names escape me.

Eduardo Slabofvic
30-Nov-2010
11:22:39 AM
There is a publisher called Tobacco that produce maps of the Dollomites that show all the Via Ferratas as well as walking tracks and huts etc. Ciccerone do a three volume guide to Via Ferrata, as well as walking and climbing, although, I found their Classic Climbs of the Dolomites to contain very crap topos (routes marked as being where they are are not). All the Huts I stayed in had a local route book, usually hand drawn, with all the variants identified.
One Day Hero
30-Nov-2010
11:34:14 AM
Yeah, there must be stuff on the web now too. We got shown that sport route at Sella by some local guys who were putting up routes, no way we'd have found anything like it with the info we had. If the one I did was anything to go by, multipitch sport is the awesomest secret of the doli's.

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There are 56 messages in this topic.

 

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