Tessin - southern Switserland

Well, and this week as well the weather asks for patience and flexibility.... our initial plan was to climb the Niederman on "Graue Wand" in the Furka area but the weather got bad, so we drove south to the Tessin. Normally, the Tessin is a good climbing area almost all year round. The mild climate of the Lago Maggiore and the excellent climbing facilities makes this area a good place to be. In summer it is often too hot.
But if you want to climb and in the other areas is too much rain predicted you drive south, take some extra water with you and don't even think about complaining about the warmth.... shut up and climb :-)
Things are really interesting down there when it is hot. The typical routes are on slab and the friction under your climbing shoes correlates negatively with rising temperatures.... and again, shut up and climb :-)
First we climbed a classic route in the area: Speroni di Ponte Brolla. It's a worthwhile route on slabs in the lower part and the upper pillar get's pretty steep. The belays are well equipped and you will find a lot of bolts in between. We used a single rope (50m) and brought 10 quickdraws with us. We climbed the 11 pitches in about 3 hours... from the top of the pillar you walk back to the valley in an hour or so. We were back at 13.00h, took a swim and in the late afternoon we did some baseclimbs.


hardmover Nando on a "one finger problem":-)



in the late afternoon, some baseclimbs in Ponte Brolla with the "Speroni" in the background...

Next day we climbed Alhambra. The Alhambra is one  of the longest routes in the Tessin, 19 pitches (2 x 6b+, 2 x 6b, 2 x 6a+, 2 x 6a and a lot of slab pitches around 5b/5c. Together with the high temperatures (shut up....) it was a pretty demanding climb. It took us 7,5 hours to reach the top and another 1,5 hours to walk down again (including 6 abseils). The Alhambra is really good protected as well, we took 13 quickdraws with us.


6a slab in the upper headwall 



almost on top, Nando following in the last difficult pitch

Good topos and information about all climbing stuff in the Tessin area you can find in the Suisse Plaisir climbing guide "sud".

 

preparing for the next alpine climbing stuff - bought some new climbing shoes, after 3 years the "climbing zone" was almost gone, I bought the same LaSportiva shoe again, can you see difference....