Italy days 5 and 6

Day 5 continued.

As previously mentioned we decided to try and avoid the miserable wet rain by driving North to Maiolo where there was a possibility of it being drier and maybe even the chance of some climbing. Three hours later via roads that make Sheffield's look well maintained and with a very interesting lesson into how the Italians cope with traffic jams thrown in for good measure we arrived at the crag.

Obviously the weather reporting in Italy is about as accurate as it is in this country! However having driven all that way we (or rather I) decided that we were going to have a look at the crag regardless and get some syke up for another visit sometime. Suitably armed with umbrellas we stomped off down the road to have a look at the crag.

The crag is somewhere down below (with a very picturesque church on top of the crag apparently) but quite where I have no idea as we somehow lost the huge amounts of syke we possessed on the 400 yards we had walked to this point. The path had a rather ominous look of quicksand about it and if it was possible it was actually raining harder. Neil made a few noises about coffee and cake and so we bailed with absolutely no qualms about it.

Day 6

The last day of the Italy trip dawned to more rain but the low pressure had been moving slowly up from the South and so we decided to go back to Le Placche de Miracolo for the final day. After a very successful first visit to Placca B with two 6a+ onsights in the bag the plan was to go to Placca A and do a couple of the 6a's, follow that up with a couple of 6a+'s and then have a crack at getting the 6b onsight.

As with many of my great plans it was doomed to fail at the first hurdle and pretty spectacularly too - the 6a that I chose to warm up on was in a word nails. This was not just any 6a, this was proper old skool 6a with spicy moves between each bolt for the entire 30 metres and topped off with a weird rock over move that would have been a piece of piss on the grit. Take away the relative comforts of any semblance of friction though and it felt a fair bit harder - there was nothing for it other than shutting down the brain, uttering a few last choice swear words and commiting to it. First route of the day in the bag at a far greater cost than I had thought it was going to be. The second route was shorter at 23m and didn't have a weird rockover move but it proved to be no less arduous. Like the first route it was easy enough to get a rest at just about every bolt - the problem was making the moves between the bolts... It would have been preferable not to have such good rests at times as each time you calmed down a bit after getting the next bolt clipped you then contemplated the moves required to get to the next bolt with a sinking feeling as more hard and\or tenous moves presented themselves to test yourself against.

I am making this sound like it was some terrible ordeal and at times it felt like it but it's this style of continuous mental challenge that really makes climbing what it is to me. That need to keep digging deep again and again to find the resolve not to rest on the gear and commit to those next few moves in an attempt to get to the next bolt, just shutting out the fear of falling and acting on an almost pure instinct. You know that with every bolt the chain is that bit closer and once you get there the adrenaline rush is almost as good as it gets.

The views aren't too bad either.