A team of us headed through the Mont Blanc tunnel this weekend to climb at Traversella. Traversella is a group of south facing crags near Ivrea, the crags are situated above the Bruno Piazzi hut so you can get a great cup of coffee beofre going climbing and a beer afterwards.
Kate and I were joined by Kath Murphy and Roger Knox for Roger's birthday. We climbed some great single pitch routes on Sunday then moved onto some of the higher multipitch crags on monday. The south facing aspect allows climbing at Traversella all year round, all you need is a dry day and the sun to be out. The forecast is for loads of fresh snow over the next few days with over 60cm forecast at 1500m and snow to 600m so winter is definitley on it's way.
A rather mixed week so far Kate and I escaped the drizzle in Chamonix on Sunday morning and drove down to Traversella a great set of crags near Ivrea at the bottom of the Val d'Aosta. All th e crags face south so you can climb in the sun almost all year round. There is a great hut at the bottom of the crag which is open at weekends from March to December. We started off on Parete degli Eroi climbing the 2 pitch 5c Panorama sul Piazza we then moved round to Salto della Felici and climbed a number of single pitch routes. Ubfortunatley a few of the routes on this sector of crag have been chipped giving some of the steepest route in the 5s I have ever climbed. On Monday we walked a bit further up the hill to the Torrione degli Istruttori and climbed a coulple of 4 pitch routes we started with Via Degli Istruttori 5b which is great the top 5b pitch up an overhung wall on huge holds. In contrast the second route we did Ladri di Cristalli 6a+ which had 2 great thin slab pitches.
Since we got back it has snowed again about 30cm up high, Richard Lundberg and I went for a skin near St Gervais we went from Communailles to the bottom of the Evasion lift. There was plently of snow and I didn't hit the base once on the way down. We spotted a piste machine working near Le Bettex so fingers crossed for more snow.
After a weeks DIY we escaped to Traversella again this weekend.
We drove down on Saturday morning and walked up to the Bruno Piazza hut www.traversella.net and visited a couple of crags we hadn't climbed on before. We started on Settore di Nicchia where the theme of really steep 5's continued then moved onto the longer Placchea Nere where we climbed a couple of multi pitch 6a's which were superb. We stayed in the hut on Sat night which is one of the best huts I have stayed in. We were the only people staying over night, we had a wood burner in the dorm and the meal was rerstaurant standard great wine and coffee and the bill was less than 60euros. On Sunday we climbed at Paretina before heading for Torino, in the early evening we went to see the Cirque du Soleil's travelling show Delirium, which was on at the Olympic stadium in Torino, we spent the night in Torino then had a wonder round the city on Monday. Its worth noting for those visiting the city that most of the shops are shut on Monday morning.