UKC

Jacopo Larcher & Babsi Zangerl climbs Gondo Crack, 8c trad

© Richard Felderer

Jacopo Larcher and Barbara Zangerl have both managed to free a long standing project at the Cippo crag near the village Gondo in Switzerland. The project was bolted by A. Manini and M. Pellizzon almost 15 years ago, and since then it had been an open project.

Barbara Zangerl entering the crux section on Gondo crack, 8c, Sippo crag, Gondo  © Richard Felderer
Barbara Zangerl entering the crux section on Gondo crack, 8c, Sippo crag, Gondo
© Richard Felderer

From Jacopo's fb: As its name says, it follows an obvious crack which you can also be protected with trad gear. Maybe it's not as safe as with bolts, but for us it made more sense to climb it in this way,

We called it 8c (or 5.14b R). The bolts are obviously still there, so you can choose the rules of the game you want to play. You should go and check it out: it's really cool!

The route is around 15 degrees overhanging and has a crux which Tom Randall describes as: A single, shallow finger in a tiny slot to make a full length move to the next jam. Think 1-4-8 on the campus board. After this, you take a small gaston, slap to a sloper, then reverse your finger into a "Cobra-style" undercut mono move.

Build your feet and then pull off a total max body length move to a three finger edge. At this point you're desperately wanting it to be all over, but from here you have to single arm deadhang the edge (I've been telling people for years that one arm pull ups are useless and then I find one!) and do what feels like a one-armer on it as the foot hold is so poor.

Tom worked on the project a couple of years ago and writes about it in his excellent blog.

Barbara says that ...it felt hard and pumpy to place the gear and it was quite a mental challenge to climb the crux quite far above the last piece of gear.
Super psyched to push my personal trad climbing limit a bit further.


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Jacopo was born in Merano, South Tyrol, but grew up in Bolzano. He has Sport climbed up to 9a/+ and 8b+ onsight; Bouldered up to 8B/+; Trad up to E9/E10; multipitch up to 8b+ redpoint and 8a+ onsight on...

Jacopo's Athlete Page 19 posts 6 videos



6 Apr, 2017
Anybody want to hazard a guess at an E-grade?!
7 Apr, 2017
Big respect to both for opting to do it in the Trad style. Top Job.
7 Apr, 2017
What have they ever done at Alderly ? :-)
7 Apr, 2017
In difficulty, 8c is on or slightly below Rhapsody, isn't it ? so E10 ?
7 Apr, 2017
"it felt hard and pumpy to place the gear and it was quite a mental challenge to climb the crux quite far above the last piece of gear" If she was scared couldn't she have just clipped one of the bolts? Seems a bit of a contrived trad ascent if you always have the option to clip a bolt every few meters and choose not to.
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