A much discussed route, by those who have repeated it, by those who have not succeeded and even by those who have never touched it firsthand. All the ingredients for a legend. According to Francesco Salvaterra the route is perfectly passable and the dangerous pitches are the initial ones, not the more difficult ones. He only recommends going for it when you’re fit…
The legendary Big Bang
Of Francesco Salvaterra
(published on francescosalvaterra.com on 22 October 2023)
Sometimes the climbs that happen almost by chance are the most beautiful. On 19 October 2023 with Franz Nardelli the idea was to climb a route at Scoglio di Boazzo, but around 8am the day seemed cold and overcast. Option B: crag. Then an inspiration comes to me… what if we went to the Big Bang? Ah no, the girls want to go and pick chestnuts in the afternoon… and be it a crag.
I take the two pests to kindergarten and return home to get my backpack and say goodbye to Chiara, just in time to discover that they will instead be going to a friend’s birthday party in the afternoon. Then there would be a way! In the meantime I’ll throw everything in the car, then we’ll see. Coffee with croissants and freshly squeezed juice at the Miori alle Sarche bar is a tradition, with Franz we don’t talk about the route but about the disastrous situation in Palestine. We both agree that we can’t stand Israelis, not only because of what is happening but because we have met so many of them in our travels in South America and never liked them. The average Israeli is like a Texan in terms of arrogance and consumerism, but with a shaken of chosen-race religious ideologies and military brainwashing.
Franz Nardelli on the second tricky pitch of the Traudi route.
Not that I take it lightly Big Bang, I’ve been wanting to repeat it for at least 15 years. Maybe for once I overestimated the effort of a climb, but it was a good thing because I really enjoyed it.
The line is perfect, along with the Via Cesare Levis opened two years earlier (13 October 1978, Maurizio Zanolla, Marco Furlani and Giovanni Groaz) is THE line of the wall, the three most famous ladder roofs in Arco. Between one thing and another we arrive at the base of the hoof at past 11am.
We know the first section in common with many routes well and soon we are on the attack. On the left the rises via dell’Angelo (March 1, 2000, Heinz Grill and Johanna Blümel), our way on the right. There Big Bang in the first two pitches he travels the via Traudi, an itinerary (4 May 1967) that is still very challenging, opened by the extreme skier Heini Holzer and Renato Reali. As I climb to second, and throw down all the stones I can, a memory comes to mind. I had done it Tradus bringing us a classmate of mine, Roberta. I had started a few years ago and she practically didn’t even climb, after a route like that she must have stopped permanently. I was a good guide, but he didn’t pay me and I wanted to do those routes there.
The most famous ladder roofs of the Sarca valley.
The third pitch is slightly more challenging, but is well protectable. These three initial pitches are definitely the most dangerous of the climb due to the often crumbly or grassy rock and the limited possibilities for protection. The belays all have three or four pegs which we check and integrate with friends, overall they are good. Once we arrive under the red crack that leads to the roofs, we take a break and pull out the cord to retrieve the backpack with the drill. My intention is to repeat the route also to make it safer and more accessible, it is a shame that a similar line is almost abandoned.
You can read all sorts of things on the web, in summary it seems that on the pitch of the roofs there are some pressure nails missing and that very large friends are needed to get through. We will see.
The red crack that leads to the roofs is made of very good rock and is really beautiful, with some fun fist-joint passages, also because you can protect yourself well with friends. I had read that Giuliano had opened the pitch at the start with a single protection, a piton. Halfway along, a fairly large boulder had come loose in his hands and, to prevent it from falling onto his companion, he was forced to crush it with his chest and legs against the wall. In that precarious situation he had managed to pull out a nail and hammer it into a crack, at the last minute.
Even if I’m not a bad climber, I really wouldn’t know how to climb a pitch like that with just one piece of protection, impossible for my psyche, without thinking that the rock must have been even more precarious on the first pass. Some mountaineers of those years were simply used to not protecting themselves much, they went solo, didn’t have friends and lived to climb. It was an era that prepared mountaineers different from subsequent generations and perhaps it’s a good thing, if you consider that almost no one nowadays takes certain risks anymore. I arrive at the fateful hanging belay: four excellent original pressure bolts and a shaky bolt recently placed on a flake of rock that rings hollow.
Since it is a hanging belay and the pressure nails are difficult things to evaluate, I decide to put a 10 mm stainless steel fix. The pressure ones have a nice look, but thinking about the repeaters I decide that it is an acceptable compromise. I retrieve the big bag, put the fix, remove the treacherous one which is better not to trust and recover Franz who deflects the shot from the only precarious blade.
On the roof pitch I start without a hammer and pegs, I want to try to free climb it and if we need to put fixes to replace missing pressure pegs or reattach normal pegs, we will abseil from the belay upstream to do it.
The first roof is well protected by an hourglass (passing a cord through it must not have been easy), to get under the second there is an unexpected horizontal crack which helps a lot. The second is more difficult but is well protected. At the start Giuliano had placed a large wedge towards the end of the pitch: this remained there for many years but is now no longer there. In my opinion, Stenghel mostly climbed free, then planted the wedge as best he could and, hanging from it, with his free hands drove the pressure bolt with the awl. There aren’t many other ways to open a crack like this, even with new generation friends, because it’s almost always too wide even for n. 6.
Under the third roof, planted in the horizontal crack, there are 4 nails making up a stop that makes no sense because it is very uncomfortable and less than ten meters from the previous one. Perhaps the belay was set up by someone who was unable to continue and was lowered to the previous one. The traverse under the third roof is the key section and can be understood immediately by looking at it. A good pressure nail secures the step and then the next one is off the edge about five feet or so away. Feet high, I hit the crack with an inverted dülfer and I trust in two small but providential supports: it’s just one step and, having taken the edge, I’m out where, jamming one knee to rest, I postpone the first of three pegs in rapid succession. What a spectacular passage!
Before leaving I had freed the entire harness from the scrap metal by holding it on a shoulder strap, on the right, so I can fit properly in the crack and can let go of my hands to take a breath and reseat all the nails. On the transom, just after the pressure nail, I noticed a barely visible awl hole measuring two or three millimetres. It doesn’t seem to me that the rock broke causing the bolt to come out, in my opinion it is more likely that the first climber started bolting but then gave up, either due to the uncomfortable position or the crooked and damaged awl. Giuliano must have made the free passage, he certainly would have been capable of it, or perhaps he used the wedge, in any case there are no deep holes from protruding pegs.
Outside the third roof one of the pressure nails sticks out quite a bit, Giuliano himself had told me that the awl had bent and was no longer able to make deep enough holes. This route had been opened on the same day without previous inspections: if you think about the oppressive environment, the technical difficulties, the friability and the minimal bolting, only 8 bolts (between pressure and normal) was a real exploit. It takes at least an hour and a half to place 4 pressure bolts (plus 4 at rest), ten minutes per hole is an average time from a comfortable position.
A few more crawling movements lead to a good normal peg and a final cracked roof, where I put the only friend on the pitch, a yellow. I took all the others for nothing because they don’t fit anywhere. The first climbers’ belay is at the top left, a wedge can still be seen today, but one has been equipped further down and to the right which allows you to see your partner and facilitates the next pitch. Franz also freed me up without any problems. The pitch remains as it is, the protections are solid and it is not dangerous at all, if you fall you go flying into space. It certainly isn’t a pitch that can be climbed in A0, it never has been, let alone when it was opened. Simply the obligatory VI+, declared by the first climbers and which has always remained in the Arco guides, must be raised by a sharp degree, as for many other routes in Stenghel. The VI was the extreme limit of the closed scale popular at the time, but everyone has a different extreme limit.
The penultimate pitch is a beautiful discontinuous dihedral of compact rock, here in the nineties a climber died from a bad fall, probably due to a wrong hold, this also contributed to the bad reputation of the route. There are even those who said that the climber made a fatal flight due to the release of the pressure bolts on the previous pitch: nonsense. The last length, quite short, is a fun fireplace that leads to the horizontal dimension of the coppice forest under the east face of Monte Casale.
A small mountaineering masterpiece, not for everyone but not even for a few, with a character still capable of offering emotions and an unforeseen finish line, beautiful, right?
Big Bang
Pian de la Paia (Piccolo Dain di Pietramurata), Sarca Valley
300 m, VIII- (VII+ obbl.)/R3/II
Giuliano Stenghel and Alessandro Baldessarini, 1980
Description
One of the mountaineering masterpieces of the Sarca Valley, which after more than forty years maintains its character as a feared and severe route.
Use
For the two most difficult pitches it may be useful to take a small backpack with a cord: especially on the crux pitch the backpack is uncomfortable.
Access and Return
Access as per Caesar Levi (Diedro Manolo), return on foot.
Material
A complete series of friends up to #4, useful to round #3 for the 4th pitch. Hammer and nails for emergency.
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2023-11-06 18:22:30
#legendary #Big #Bang #GognaBlog
