Category: Climbing

Ortler, and more

Ortler, and more

To be honest, few months ago I didn’t think this would have happened. When the corona crisis began, and Europe closed its internal and external borders, I thought my alpine plans for the summer were no more.

However, I decided to keep training, once again following a plan from Uphill Athlete, for two reasons: the first, training is never wasted time. If nothing happened, I still would have added to my training bank hours upon hours of aerobic training. The second reason to keep training was that, if at some point in the summer I got green light for my alpine trip with NKBV, I would have had no time to start training, so I had to be in good shape already.

And finally in mid June, one month before the trip, we got green light. And after the trip, here I am sharing some videos I made with Suunto, highlighting the three main summits of the trip: Cima Marmotta, Zufallspitze, and the Ortler.

Statistics: 2018

Statistics: 2018

Another year, another post. Looks like I only find time to write something during holidays.
Sometimes I actually feel like I have something interesting to write, but this feeling does not last enough, and I do not start writing soon enough, so I end up not writing.
But enough with this, and let’s write something.

The plan for today was to go climb outside, but the weather changed and it did rain the whole day, with some loud thunderstorms too.
I also thought of going out for a run, but looking outside the window made me very lazy.
So, instead of doing something, I decided to look at some statistics for the year that ends today; sport related statistics, that’s it.
And now, without further ado, the statistics:

Total distance: 2221.78 km
Total time: 378h 42m 39s
Elevation gain: 27788 m

Compared with 2017, I covered ~60% more distance on foot/biking/swimming, but had less altitude gain.
The addition of biking to my training schedule must have had an impact on the total distance, as must have had training (slightly more seriously than in the past) for a half marathon, while the reduced time in the mountains meant less vertical gain.
Time comparison with the past would not be fair, though, because 2018 has been the first year in which I kept track of all activities, also indoor.

I am happy of the results I achieved running, with 4 races in the calendar year.
If I exclude the first one, the Egmond half marathon, in which I got injured and felt very bad, in every other race I performed better than expected, and managed to score a PR every single time.
For next year, I am still considering if I want to race or not, and which distance; I must admit that I am fancying the idea of running a full marathon, maybe in the fall, but I have not decided yet.

Climbing took a hit this year.
The focus was mostly on bouldering indoor, and I trained seriously during the first half of the year, which included a great bouldering trip (visiting Varazze and Sassofortino) with Mauro.
After that, I had other goals and did not train as much, and a sport/multipitch climbing trip never materialized.
Gladly, I managed to lead a couple of short sport routes last week, to end the year on a positive note.

I also wanted, in my original planning, to spend more time at altitude.
I tried to summit (unguided) the Gran Paradiso, but my partner did not feel well during our acclimatization days and bailed after reaching the Chabod hut.
At that point I did not have the time, nor the budget, to participate in a mountaineering course of some sort, or to plan for some guided trips.
A main goal for next year is to get back into the alpine, and get more technical mountaineering training.

In 2018 I had less short hiking trips, and instead had three longer ones.
The first was a mixed hiking and canoeing trip in Sweden, during which I even experimented with using a hammock for sleeping in camp.
The second trip was the Tour du Mont Blanc, that I completed in 7 days traveling alone and experiencing almost everything that the weather had to offer.
The last trip was a multi-day ascent of Triglav that included hiking and via ferrata.

Well, enough writing for today.
See you next year!

Bouldering trip in May

Bouldering trip in May

I should probably write more often. I do actually think about posting something after every trip, but then time passes and I forget what I wanted to say, or believe it’s not that important anymore. Anyway, even if months after, and even after the videos have been on YouTube for a while, I decided to post them here.

In May I went on a climbing trip with Mauro. We decided to mainly do some bouldering (although we brought ropes, quickdraws, and harnesses just in case) and to follow the weather.
As you may remember, usually our trips are plagued by rain and floods and we barely climb anything, so this time we rented a car in Milano and drove South, first to Varazze in Liguria, and then even more South to Sassofortino in Toscana, to stay ahead of a stormy front that was coming down from the North.

We managed to climb some, and got our fingers shredded into pieces by the rocks. I guess we both thought we could climb harder and send at least a 6b, but we stayed true to ourselves and ended up climbing up to 6a+ (i.e. our usual ground).
As usual I got scared more than once, screamed, cried, and all the usual, but you will not see that in the videos.
Actually, you’ll only see few climbs in the videos because we were busy climbing and did remember to position (or turn on) my camera only few times.

So, without further ado, the videos of myself and Mauro bouldering in Varazze and Sassofortino.

 

 

 

What did I learn from this trip?
I did learn that if you want to have a successful climbing trip you have to be flexible and follow weather and conditions, and to do so you need to have time.
Previous trips were always too short, leaving not enough time to either enjoy the climbing, or avoid the inclemency of weather.

Melloblocco 2017

Melloblocco 2017

In May I went to Melloblocco and enjoyed some good bouldering on the granite of Val Masino and Val di Mello, together with the usual suspects: Mauro, Andrea, Marta, and Jonathan.
As usual, there was no time to record the successful ascents because of us being too stocked and busy, so the video contains mostly our failures 🙂

 

WetCrag (beta)

WetCrag (beta)

During the fall of 2016 there was something on my mind. First, I was thinking about my trips to Fontainebleau and to the TNF Mountain Festival, and what I did remember about these two events was the rain. In 2016, every time I went on a climbing trip, it did rain. Even in Basilicata we got rain and were forced to shorten our trip by one day!
Second, I was about to change job, and thought about getting more familiar with Python. And what better to get more familiar with a programming language than a pet project?

This is how WetCrag was born. I wanted a website to give me the status of the rocks in the crags where I climb, or where I plan to go (sooner or later). And I also wanted a short term forecast, to see if rain (or snow) was coming or not.
And this is exactly what WetCrag does. It is really as simple as that. It contains a map with crags (or bouldering areas), and it tells you (and me!) temperature and wind speed at the crag, plus the status of the rocks (if they are dry or wet), and the outlook for the next five days (if rain and snow are forecasted or not).

 

 

Does it work? Yes. We tested it in the past few months, and it predicted conditions at our local crags pretty decently.
Is it 100% accurate? Of course not! We use weather data from the Internet, and cannot be 100% accurate. But it’s better than nothing. Check it for yourself 🙂

At the moment, we have just a bunch of crags and bouldering areas in the map. If you want your local crag to be added just sent me a message with the name of the Crag, and the GPS coordinates. Or even better, send me a link on Google Maps and I’ll get the coordinates from there. My email is me(at)isazi.net 😉