UKC

Hi,
Off to dolomites on SEPT 1st
Looking for :
Marmolada topos or decent guide guide book with topos.
Specifically we are climbing around 5 or 6 ie VS to EI in the Punta Penia area.
We are aware of a really good book [that apears to be unavailable!]
Marmolada South Face
Author Maurizio Giordani – Published Versante Sud (2009) – ISBN 9788887890716.0000

Any help regarding individual topos or books much appreciated

In reply to kenhansard:

I would be worried that September is too late in the year for Marmolada.

There is a handful of routes described in the "100 classic routes" guidebook and the topos are quite good.

Enjoy and good luck

In reply to kenhansard:

Maybe the book is available on other languages. Not too many easy routes on Marmolada btw. To my experience the grades can be quite sandbaggy and I'd say at VS there isn't much to do.

Had a look at the comparison table and and it looks like VS translates to bold French 4. The easiest of the big routes is Don Quixote and that one has bold french 6a (or E1/E2). Also had a look at the South Face book and there is only one route which is less than french 6a. It's called Tomasson and it's given 4+/800m and alpine D.

You'll have all you'll have in the Giordani book here online:
http://web.mit.edu/custer/Desktop/PrintMe/Document_(5).pdf

In reply to whistler:

September 1st should be ok if the weather is fine. Last year I was there October 1st and the weather was perfect. The days are shorter than June, though.

In reply to adnix: Fantasticaly generous of you. thankyou, Exactly what I wanted!
We've done Tre-Cima [Dollemites] and the Cassin route [piz badile] at exactly this time of year and are hoping it will work out well once again.

Yes the routes do look a little on the hard side and poss undergraded regarding the guide descriptions.

In reply to kenhansard: I did one of those routes and tried another, what I found was:
1) Via Classica - crapper rock than the guide suggests imo. Only one hard move on that V- crux pitch but overall climbing felt hard for the grade on most pitches, especially where the rock was crappy. Massive pain with a rucksack on a number of pitches. I squeezed behind the pinnacle as soon as I saw light through, this was too low down because I had to take everything off (helmet, gear, rucksack, etc.) and rage like a banshee to wriggle through and had no abseil on the far side. After the pinnacle, make sure to go quite far right in the 2nd pitch in the big corner to get out onto the second terrace. The hut warden, beer and food were not in situ when I reached the top!! (but there is matresses, beds and blankets for 3 in a room round the back of the hut on the summit if you finish very late (no water though)). There was some stone and icefall from melting snow/ice. The toilet at the top is just a hole over the face, so think twice about drinking the water running down the face!
Use the bivouacco on the Ombretta pass the night before you climb, it has blankets and matresses and is very close to the start of the route. Route took me 6 hours on solo. Decent is long but obvious and easy.

2) Vinatzer/Messner - A lot of pitches felt hard for the grade. Generally you can run any 2 pitches together with 60m half ropes, I found this useful to keep speed up. Route finding was fine till the bit terrace, after that we never did really feel we were back on the line. Tried to force a way out of the top of the face but it completely blanked out when I would guess we were level with the shattered yellow crack. We abseiled to the terrace, spent a vilely cold night snuggled under an overhang there and then spent many hours abseiling and backclimbing traverses the next day (No water or food or energy to try the top half again). A chap I met out there this year said that there are a couple of sleeping bags stashed in a cave near the Vinatzer/Messner line on the big terrace for people to use in an emergency... I wouldn't rely on them though

Not done Don Quixote but it sounds nice. Worth bearing in mind that two of these routes have a crux pitch right at the very end so you really need to be confident that after 20+ pitches, you can still climb E1/2.

There is bound to be a guide in german out there somewhere with more Marmolada routes. You can go a long way with a topo and translations for common climbing terminology. Or in Italian for that matter.

As the other guy said, the Marmolada isn't known for its easier classic routes. It is known for its modern testpieces.

In reply to kenhansard:

Unfortunately the new edition is not now due until January 2013.

In reply to kenhansard: You can pick up a copy of the versant sud guide when you're out there. I found it in Canazei in English but could only find it in Italian in Cortina.

You can always take a sneaky photo of the Hut's guide (in Italian) and just rely on that.

Wasn't too impressed with the topo in the 100 Classic Climbs guide for the Vinatzer/Messner. Versant Sud topo was good except for just before crux 2 where it wasn't clear that we should be going quite far left but this might have been better explained in the text (which we didn't copy)

The 3 crux pitches of Vinatzer/Messner would get E2 in their own right and there's a lot of climbing above HVS.

The Alpine Club guide description was ok for the Vinatzer part, but all over the place above the terrace on the Messner.

In reply to kenhansard: We used the English translations of the Emiliano Zozzi Mid Grade Trad Rock Western Dolomites (Vols 1 & 2) on our recent Dolomite trip. They are good guidebooks with detailed pitch descriptions, colour photo topos and clear descent advice - much better than the "Classic Dolomite Climbs" that we also had.
There is only one route on the Marmolada described in these guides though - Via Classica (Bettega-Tomasson) in Volume 1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/grade-trad-rock-western-dolomites/dp/B0088CR54G
I got the guides online in advance, but also saw English language versions for sale in Canazei - in the big outdoor store at the southern end of the town (opposite the Spar) ...forgotten the shop's name though.

In reply to kenhansard:

Have you done the Comici route on Gima Grande? I haven't done it but I've done the Spigolo Giallo and the Cassin on Cima Piccolissima. My gut feeling is that Marmolada is quite committing compared to anything around Tre Cime. The routes are longer and the approach + descent are far longer which easily translates to carrying bivy gear which is totally crap on Marmolada. The climbing is so steep that a big pack is totally out of the question.

The best is to carry a small pack with a wind jacket and a camelbak but nothing else. In my opinion the approach hike and glacier descents are best done with ultralight running shoes and nothing else. I think Marmolada is much like doing anything in a day in Yosemite. The glacier gives a twist of flavour and makes it more exiting with the running shoes.

On a second look it there are two next best routes on Punta Penia:
- Solda 6a+/R2 or TD and 690m of climbing.
- Micheluzzi 6a+A0/R2 or TD and 660m.

Don Quixote although being longer is easier than these two. It has 6a/R2 and 800m but a lot of it is grade III and it gets an overall grade of D+. The alpine grade is a bit sandbag imho. From what I've heard and spoke with friends so is everything else out there. You should treat those TD's like they are hard TD+ anywhere else not to get in trouble.

In reply to adnix: I was wondering what Alpine grade the Vinatzer/Messner would get if it was in the Alps - TD+? ED?

In reply to kenhansard:

If you are passing through Trento city you can borrow mine, although it's the Italian version.
I keep meaning to go and do something over there but never get round to it ...

In reply to Fultonius:

The book gives Vinatzer 6a+/R2/TD and the Messner Exit 6a+/R3/TD.

In my opinion the grade seems quite modest. It's not what Piola calls TD. It's more like the Gervasutti pillar or the Matterhorn North Face type of TD. =)

In reply to adnix:

Don't entirely agree with this. Decent from Cima Grande was quite a protracted affair both times I did it, several abseils, exposed and in a couple of places tricky downclimbing and a bit of route finding to boot. By comparison, the decent from Punta Penia is an easy walk to a via ferrata which leads all the way to a good path back on the south side of the mountain; no route finding difficulties, abseils or downclimbing. If you are on Cima Grande and the s*** really has hit the fan, you can crouch in a cave getting hypothermia or just push on down through the worst nature has to throw, from Punta Penia you can sit in the hut and have tea and biscuits till the storm abates, even if it's closed there are beds and blankets in the bivouacco round the back of the hut.
Even for routes topping out at the other end of the Marmolada right, I should imagine that in a excrement fan interface situation, the cablecar station would offer shelter, overnight in the worst case.

I'd agree that the routes on the Marmolada feel significantly longer, though I wouldn't decribe them as being particularly steep. I think the main problem of a rucksack would be the suckage in chimneys which seem quite prevalent on the easier lines there.

In reply to Erstwhile:

I'll go with ya mate

In reply to kenhansard: There is a copy of the Marmolada definitive guide by versante sud in english at Rock On in Craggy Island, Guildford.