EYC and Pontives

Yesterday I came home from L' Argentiere where we competed in the second European Youth Bouldering Cup. The comp went quite well and eventually I managed to win in front of my friend Alex Khazanov and Nathan Phillips.

For our little Tito

Even if I had no skin, today I decided to go to Pontives for a quick session on the roof project. I thought I would be too tired to climb the problem but somehow I managed to fight my way through the roof doing the first ascent of yet another amazing boulder in Pontives.

FA of "Regentanz"

Time to leave home!

Yesterday I was in Pontives again to finish off this project I've brushed and tried lately. Since I had the pads under the "Lose Yourself" bloc, I decided to quickly try a boulder on the right hand side which hasn't been climbed yet. It is just a little 5 move boulder and I managed to climb it after about half an hour.

FA of "Stehaufmännchen", to the right or "Lose Yourself" and "Creativity"

I then walked the way up to the project. After trying the topout and failing once from the start, all of my sudden my brother called me and said that he is in the forest searching me.
I explained him the way and so he reached me after a couple of minutes. With my brother watching me I set off for another try and I had success. Finally I was sitting on top of this amazing boulder problem which was in my mind since I saw it for the first time. I guess I will take my brother with me more regularly. Thanks bro for the support =)

nice view at the "Traumpfeiler"

Today I went back again to the "Traumpfeiler" to take some lessons in slab climbing =). I decided to try this route called "L Julon", which was supposed to be quite hard. The route consists of 4 pitches. The first one is an easy one; followed by the crux pitch and the third as well as the fourth are not as hard as the second one but still quite hard.
Eventually I managed to climb the second pitch on my second go and I fought my way through the third and the fourth pitch onsighting both, what made me really happy.  
As always it was really nice to climb on the Traumpfeiler and I'm hoping that I slightly improved my slab climbing abilities.

As you can read I'm just climbing around my home right now. For sure it is one of the most amazing places I know, but I'm slowly getting bored and I'm really looking forward to leave home and go climbing somewhere else.

Why I love climbing

Climbing is AWESOME.
Why, are you asking? Well I'll try to explain it to you.
A little more than a week ago I was in Sofia competing in the EYC, the past weekend I went bouldering in Pontives and today I climbed a multipitch route on the big Sella massif. All this things are pretty different. In Sofia I climbed in a competition with people from every different parts of Europe. In Pontives I worked on my project again, together with Ale and my little brother. And today I climbed 9 pitches alternating the lead with my father.
The one thing that combines these three different experiences is the climbing. But it's not the climbing itself what I love about climbing. What I really love about climbing is the combination of climbing as a sport and all the various possibilities that are connected to this amazing sport.
You get to see different countries. You get to climb with so many different people. You can go sport climbing, bouldering, multipitch climbing, in the gym, on little boulders, on 50 meter cliffs, on huge big walls. You can climb onsight, you can project things, you can climb toprope, if you are crazy enough you can also climb free solo. Whatever. There are so many options you can choose from, if you're about to go climbing. And exactly that's what I love about climbing.    

"Rock or plastic ?" Part II

The last few weeks have been quite busy so I had not that much time to update this blog but to be honest this is just an excuse for the fact that I've simply been too lazy. I just came home from one of the many competitions and because I've some time now I forced myself to write a new blog post.

Ale making the second ascent of this beautiful line in Schenna

Between all the competitions I took part lately, luckily I found some time to get to climb on some rock. I went to Schenna twice, where I am always amazed by the amount of climbed problems and projects that still have to be climbed. With a couple of friends we managed to do a few amazing first ascents and climbed some of the already existing boulders.

The new landing

Since the bouldering area in Schenna is kind of "secret" there is no guide book or no topo and consequently most of the boulders are not even graded. So basically you get there and you climb whatever is inspiring you. That's what makes Schenna so special for me.

Moreover I finally had the opportunity to go to Pontives again. Since I climbed "Lose Yourself" I've not been in Pontives anymore, perhaps also because I had no real project, and so I was motivated to brush some new lines and hopefully also climb them. Eventually I decided to finish cleaning this awesome, tall line, which my friend Martin Dejori and I started cleaning already about two years ago. After spending three days into building a decent landing and brushing off all the moss, I finally started trying the boulder. I haven't climbed the problem yet, but Rudi, who tried the boulder with me, managed to climb the left exit, adding a new 5 star line to the area.

As I already mentioned, I had a lot of competitions in the last few weeks, including an Italian Cup in Ivrea, the Italian Youth Championship in Arco, two World Cups in Kitzbühel and Log Dragomer, the European Youth Championship in Grindelwald and the Climbo. The last one was the European Youth Cup in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Unfortunately there were missing most of the strong guys so I knew that it wouldn't be difficult to get into finals. After a good qualification round I was sitting in first place having done all the 8 boulders.
The finals on the day after where as good as the qualifications, and I managed to cope with the pressure winning in front of my friends David Firnenburg from Germany and Alex Khazanov from Israel.

Qualification round

Second boulder in the final