Robbie sent Bellavista!
After a few wet days in the Zillertal where
I didn’t get up much and Robbie managed to claw his way up Total Brutal we
returned to the Tre Cime for Bellavista. The weather continued to be unstable
but we kept working at it anyway. Conditions stayed bad with the rock feeling
like soap covered marble. I managed to
unlock all of the moves of the crux pitch but didn’t put much effort into the
epic linkage required. Robbie improved on days 3 and 4 although still struggled
with committing to the sequences due to the nature of the rock, protection and
exposure. We rested on Sunday the 3rd and spent time considering our
options. Almost two weeks had past and I wondered how much more time this route
would take. We decided that despite Robbie not having climbed through the crux
of the pitch we would go ground up on the Monday and if shut down at the crux
we would leave to chase another objective for a while. This was exactly the
pressure needed for Robbie to go ‘amuerte’ on the crux.
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| Rest day dinner in the Dolomites. |
Day 5:
We awoke at 5am and made our way to the
base of the Cima Ouest. Luckily for me Robbie had decided he needed to lead the
scariest of the pitches as well as the hardest to be happy with his ascent.
This meant the initial 7b was all his and I had the luxury of a top rope. He
climbed excruciatingly slowly and precisely as one slip would mean possible
injury and he would have to repeat the pitch. He linked the pitch into the following
6c and I continued the linkage trend by climbing one super pitch consisting of
the 6a, 7a, and 7a+ all feeling as though they had a good coating of butter. We
were then at the roof and the start of the crux.
Robbie aided out the traverse powdering the
slippery holds with chalk before returning to the belay. A small rest with some
chocolate and fluids and he was off. He powered through the start of the crux
where he had been consistently falling generally due to lack of commitment
rather than fatigue. Suddenly he was at a jug rest having done the hardest
slippery section of the route. Only a sequency endurance ~8a left to add on.
20m of power screams truncated by silence as he found rests continued to the
end of the route. As he reached the
anchor for once all the hoots and hollering came from us rather than the
tourists watching down below. He had even switched off from the fear of the
position to skip several pitons which made following with some obligatory
climbing very interesting.
I dropped our fixed rope from the belay so
we could take it with us which meant we were now committed. No matter what we
were gunning for the summit. We had played on the following 8a our previous day
on the route and to our surprise found it to be closer to 7b+. Robbie wanted to
lead this too for the true lead ascent and I was happy to be taken along for
the ride. It went first attempt and we were through the roof and into
unrehearsed ground. I thought we were making ok time and it would be just a
matter of cruising to the top. Things never seem to work out that way though
and we wasted an hour or more climbing some crazy run outs past a bolt and into
choss on the 7a before we realised we were going totally off route. Once back
on track we climbed three pitches, which were not straight forward, and
occasionally scarily run out to ledge half way up the Cime. All the unique
climbing of Bellavista was done and only the long easy slabs of the classic
Cassin route originally done 80 years ago remained.
Unfortunately it was 6:30pm and with only
an hour and a half of light left we had a couple of options to consider. It had
been a dry day and the upper slabs although still wet looked passable. We could
go for the top probably doing a large portion in the dark by head torch before
a forced bivvy on the summit or we could have a forced bivvy on the ledge we
were on which had a small roof and finish off the climb in the morning. Some clouds had been building up but we
hadn’t yet had the rain and minor thunderstorm we had had most other days. The
weather had mentioned there was the possibility of no afternoon thunderstorm
but with the clouds that had built up I wondered if it was just going to be
delayed till later in the evening. We
were tired and took the less epic option of staying on the ledge with the small
roof. It got dark by around 8 and the sky opened. Pouring rain, thunder and
lightning for the entire night. Our decision not to blast on for the summit was
a lifesaver. We huddled freezing in our down jackets and got little to no
sleep.
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| Our sheltered ledge for the night half way up Cima Ouest. |
The upper slabs became a waterfall and
everything was soaked. I traversed an easy pitch to the start of the upper
route and belayed Robbie over whilst standing in a waterfall. I was now
freezing and soaked. We made the decision to bail but didn’t know how as
rappelling over the roof below would be impossible. I had a vague idea that
there was a way to traverse all the way right, along the weakness the ledge we
had bivvied on was associated with, which would lead to an exit from the face.
I am not sure where I got it from but it wasn’t true. We monkeyed along a rail
for two pitches past rusty fixed protection where the Cassin route traversed
in. Eventually the Cassin route continued down and right on rusty pins in a way
we couldn’t follow. Instead I climbed another 10m without gear and found a
shiny new bolted anchor hidden around a corner. We knew a couple of German
climbers who had climbed a new bolted 7c somewhere on this section of the face
and figured that this must be it. There was even chalk on the holds. We
couldn’t traverse any more right so we started rappelling. I had to back clip
some bolts and swing around to reach the lower anchors but they kept on
appearing and after an hour or so we were back on solid ground.
It was awesome to be part of Robbies
achievement in freeing all the Bellavista pitches and a fun couple of days out
getting stuck on a ledge yet again. Now we can do some sport climbing before
focusing on another big objective. We are constantly talking about The Eiger
although with the wettest summer in 30 years (apparently) it won’t be in good
condition. We shall see what the weather does over the next couple of weeks
anyway and maybe go play on it.
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| Made a timelapse of the sunset and managed to get this shot with some lightning in it. |
2 comments:
Was nice meeting you at Auronzo. Still can't imagine what you guys are doing! Good look, Ecki
We'll done guys.
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