ENIGMA | Ffirst Ascent on Torre Trieste - Dolomiti

The Trieste Tower has unleashed the fantasies of the climbers of each era because it is such an imposing and magnetic obelisk that cannot be resisted. A tower 900 meters high that stands in the middle of the Corpass Valley. Given the importance of the wall, we had to show respect and create something that was at the height of the Torre delle Torri. I am happy in the end to have finished on this wall because, even if it is not the most difficult technical difficulty, it is certainly one of those that seemed more difficult to achieve in a clean style. I am Alessandro Bau, I am an alpine guide, but in reality I do not do the alpine guide, I am mainly an engineer. I have been climbing for 30 years, I think. I am Nicola Tondini, I have been an alpine guide for more than 25 years. I am Alessandro Beber, I am the element of disturbance of the ropeway. Good morning! This is how the adventures of the alpinists begin! We call it the Torre delle Torri, in the historical alpinist way it was called that and its importance is precisely the shape, so it remains imprinted. When you enter the Corpass Valley, you see this missile that rises towards the sky and therefore attracts a lot. This time we have made good use of the hours of light, haven't we? Rentore Trieste, we went with Beber and Nicola Tondini and our ropeway is a ropeway that has been known for more than 10 years. In 2012 we completed a route in the North-West called Colone d'Ercole and it is a glamorous route for the beauty of the rock and also of the line. In the morning, an hour in Bocca. Spectacular! We met again to solve the riddle and it was beautiful because we brought together the skills and all the experiences we had made in these 10 years and we gave the best of what we had learned to do. When, after our long and strenuous approaches, we finally reach the base of the wall, usually we have an infallible technique with high scientific content, introduced in Europe by Dr. Alessandro Baù, which is called Sassoparte. We take a pebble, we put it in one hand and whoever guesses which hand it is, usually starts. Usually, if I start, the day is gone. If, on the other hand, we were lucky and they start, we usually quickly move on to the next one. So, we are at shot 3 and Nick is putting on his shoes, so let's get down to business. Let's get down to business. I would start from a distance, in the sense that I remember perfectly as if it were yesterday, in 2003, 20 years ago. It was October, I slept just a couple of nights at the Capanna Trieste refuge. There was this tower, where I had already climbed, of course, but I wanted to look at the lines and start thinking. It would have been nice to understand if there was something above. There is the Tower of Venice and here are my very strong friends. Attention, Ale Baù passes the command. Looking at the wall, we were very doubtful about what the ascent line could be and also a bit about the style, because it was a path that was insinuated between two large lines, the Cassina and the Carlesso, open in the 1930s. And since then, incredibly, that area of ​​walls had not been frequented. As long as we had not put our hands on the individual shots, there was doubt. We talked continuously and then, of course, it was resolved only once we were there and, meter by meter, the sequences and everything came out. So it's really an enigma to solve. Over the years, we have understood that the motto is worth it, luck helps the brave, because you have to try, you have to believe, but you also need luck. And you have to be able to accept the idea of ​​being able to go back if your ethics, your idea of ​​starting is not applicable. A few years later, repeating the Carlesso, I saw that there were many areas of interesting walls, even if with many questions. Nick writes the relationship. Agreeing with each other is perhaps the most difficult thing of any project. Above all, they work when the weather is nice. Then, once we manage to organize ourselves, everything works perfectly. Our two wings. Here is the wing, which is heading towards the stop. In the autumn of 2021, I often went to climb on the Civa Giovanni Costantini and even there I remember perfectly a night when we returned and there was a completely unreal light. And it was really like the song of the sirens that says, when are you going to climb me? We hesitated for ten years before having the courage to approach the Torre delle Torri, because it is a wall rich in history and going to put your hands here is a bit like going with the brush to retouch the Sistina Chapel. It is also easy to do damage. We set ourselves a respectful style of the wall and we were also willing to abandon, to let it go, if our expectations did not allow us to make a sensible, logical line that did not interfere with the pre-existing routes. Do you also remember the brakes? This is doping. Do you try it, Nick? Go then! Ale! Come on! Come on, Nick! Ale! Come on, Nick! Come on! Very good! Come on! Come on, Ale! Come on, bad! Bad! Good! Come on, don't give up! Come on, Nick! Come on! Come on, it's yours! Yeah! Wow! Great! By now we had quite identified that the route could go up between Cassini and Carlesso. Come on, let's go! They managed to leave. It was towards the end of September. We attacked from below. We arrived at 100-0. We wanted to go on, but we got wet. In short, we were happy. Finally, we had rebuilt the route after 10 years. Certainly, I said, let's go back another time. Only Nicola and I were free. But we said, let's go and have another day, so we can try to make the hard shot of the yellows. And so we left home. We arrived at the parking lot of Cappanna Trieste and I saw Simon Gittl's car. We said hello and I said, what are you doing? We have started a new route. And I said, yes, nice. Where? And he said, we saw your bag. And so I immediately understood that it was close to where we had started to open. We immediately understood that they had the same idea as us. On the other hand, this gave us a lot of trouble, because it was a 100-0 partition, not from below. We agreed for a moment, agreed on how to proceed. From there we started the agendas. And in October we had to pull out at least 5-6 days to close the project. Which then happened. How is it up there, Ale? In short, it's raining. Good. We have chosen this mix of free climbing and exclusive use of traditional protections, because it is the one that leaves the most unknowns on the table. We are going to open new routes to live great adventures. And the adventures are bigger, the unknowns are bigger. The result is less certain. When the result is uncertain until the end, and you have to fight and earn every meter, there you know that you will find a real adventure. This style allows us to do it. So stop on the cliff just to put a nail or try to put it, because sometimes you can't. And then between a nail or a friend and the other, always climb in free climbing. If we want to summarize this concept in a few words, we want to be sure not to be sure. The penultimate time we went to Parete, Ale couldn't because he had a commitment. For a series of circumstances, Nicola and I decided to go, because the season was ending, we wanted to get to the top, etc. But I really wanted that when we got to the top, we were all three. So we arrived on the terrace with two shots under the top, it was my turn to open, I did the first part of the shot, and then I said to Nic, now we stop here, so we come back and let Ale open the last part of the shot. It was really moving. I felt really at ease for this gesture of such great generosity. It seems stupid, but they put the value of friendship, the value of a deal, the value of a team, in front of logic, in front of reason, in front of ambition, and in front of finishing a route. Ale Baou is certainly methodical, he is well determined. When I see him climbing Parete, I see that he has a clear idea of what he has to do, he has everything under control. Alessandro Bebber, he seems to start more disorganized, with less clear ideas, but I have to be honest, when he climbs, I saw him solve some T's, both here in Torre Criestia, but also when we were in Civetta, he is actually unbeatable, he is also a war machine, and every now and then it amazes me, because listening to him, it seems that he is doing nothing, and then you follow him, and you say, this shot is as hard as the previous one, and maybe he did it in a funny way. One of the most difficult shots to open was behind, towards the end of the route, there is a first part of the shot, which scales well, there is a lead from which you get out on nice holds, and then you get into this cracked behind, easy, but in the opening, when I climbed it, there was a big block inside the behind, which I had seen was unstable. The biggest difficulty was not to touch the block at all, so as not to risk making it fall on my teammates' heads. It was nerve-wracking, in an incredible way, because I couldn't afford to fall, I couldn't afford to make a mistake. And this was the whole live motive, I think, also from the top, where we had great doubts of being able to pass, great doubts of being able to protect the sections that seemed very smooth, and that instead, they always offered us a very logical climb, perfect sequences of holds, and they allowed us to climb it already in the opening, in the open pit, and protecting us only with nails and friends. All the memories I had of that place in autumn, and of the beauty of that place, in Bancorpassa, there is, off-season, a super silence, it's beautiful, and the colors, in short, the look towards the horizon, towards San Lucano, towards Agnera, are beautiful. And those contrasts of colors with the gray-silver rock that characterizes the entire top part of the wall, is what remains in my eyes. If I close my eyes, and think back to the most intense moments of this adventure, I see myself, I see us, hanging at the tip of the fingers, or at the tip of the shoes, clinging to these minimal wrinkles of the rock, on this perfect rock, it's really like living a dream. Ale Baue and Nicola Tondini are not only some of the strongest dolomites that I have had the fortune to meet, but they are also people with a big heart, and people able to put the human aspect in front of ambition.