The first few pitches were a modern variant start and consisted of easy pleasant slab climbing with frequent bolts. As such they were out of character with the rest of the route. The harder climbing started by the jammed Friend marked in the guidebook. I don't know if there was any point in clipping it, but there certainly was no point in trying to get it out again.
Shortly after this came the best pitch of the route, the big roof. I made several attempts to climb this free. To do this it was necessary to climb a steep wall on the left before reaching the crack at the lip of the overhang. Providentially it was possible to fill this with good nuts. It was then necessary to traverse this to the right, with the footholds getting ever smaller and further away under the overhang, before attempting to reach over the right-hand end of the overhang and hoping to find a hold there. Had this been on Stanage I would have stuck at it until I got it free. As it was, however, it was necessary to downclimb quite a long way to get back to a restful position, and I didn't want to spend all day on this one pitch when I didn't know what the others above would bring, so I ended up grabbing the piece of tat which hung temptingly from the right hand side of the overhang, only to find a huge hidden hold only slightly further than I had got on my free attempts!The belay above was not confidence-inspiring, consisting of two rusty pegs in a steep wall and a foot ledge small enough for the belay to qualify at least as semi-hanging. I reinforced the pegs with a Wallnut number 1 in the crack above.
Ingo did not waste any time on free attempts, but rather grabbed straight for the tat and hauled himself ingloriously up there. This suited me fine, as I was not looking forward to testing the belay. Mario, however, struggled a bit removing the two nuts which I had placed in the overhang before resorting to his dynamic traverse technique, demonstrated early that year on the Erdenkäufer/Sigl on the Schüsselkarspitze, i.e. he let go and swung across. The pegs flexed but stayed put. Unfortunately he managed to swing too far, and in his efforts to get back to climbable rock managed to pull off a block about the size of a cabbage together with the rubble surrounding it. We had earlier heard voices beneath us, and were relieved to work out that these belonged to climbers attempting a neighbouring route not directly in the fall line of our climb.
Leaving the belay was also somewhat tricky. There was only room for one on the tiny foot ledge, and so Ingo and then Mario had taken refuge in a cramped and uncomfortable position beneath an overhang slightly below and to one side of the belay. Ingo now took my place on the ledge, while Mario remained under the overhang. The climbing immediately above the belay was not much fun either. It was not desperately hard, but loose and lacking in good protection. I did not fancy one bit taking a factor two fall back onto the wobbly pegs and so used up a large fraction of my rack in the first few metres above the belay placing a selection of not entirely confidence-inspiring nuts in an effort to reduce the likelihood of this happening.
Unfortunately I passed the next belay without realising that that is what it was and continued up the grade V rock of the next pitch with my now depleted collection of nuts and quickdraws. Presently it became clear that I had climbed rather a long way since the last belay, that I had very few quickdraws left, and that a belay was nowhere in sight. It was also extremely warm in the Italian sun and my tongue was sticking to my mouth for thirst. I managed to squeeze my way to the back of the corner crack which I was climbing and wrap a sling around a chockstone, and took the risk of taking my rucksack off to get at my water bottle. Progress thereafter was also slow as I struggled to make the most of the few remaining karabiners, nuts, slings and prussiks hanging from my harness. Eventually I reached a belay and brought the others up.They arrived cursing and thirsty. Apparently I had taken over an hour to get up what turned out to have been two pitches. Luckily we were using Ingo's 60m ropes and not mine, which are 50m long, as there had been very little rope left by the time I had finally found my belay. Each had thought he was unluckier than the other, Ingo perched painfully on the toe ledge and half hanging from the wobbly pegs, and Mario bent double sitting on the sloping ledge underneath the overhang.
The rest of the route went more straightforwardly, although there was still a lot of enjoyable grade V climbing before we got to the top. Once there I was happy to sit in the piles of autumn leaves while the others coiled the ropes away.
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