“Since many years I am regulary visiting the italian Val Di Orco in the Region of Piemont. I fell in love with this beautiful wild alpine valley and the local people living there. I like the unique granite features and over the years I opened many moderate and hard climbs in the valley. The lines are so pure and every year I find new projects to work on. A hidden boulder paradise in the alps and I am really surprised that it`s still so quiet there. The unique granite offers lots of hard and technical bouldering. Maybe to technical for the powerful new gym generations 🙂 Some of the lines I opend in the past, like “El Salvador” , “Bravirabi” “Self Aperto” and of course the stunning 14m Highball “29dots” is just worldclass climbing.”
“This year I spent 3 weeks in the area, and brushed a whole new Sector below the Sergent. The new lines are a little bigger, lets say higher this year, but offers once again unique granite climbing. But the main focus this year was the sds to “Il Colonel” (8A+) a great line put up by Niky Ceria some years ago. This diamond shaped boulder a dream come true and I wanted to spent some more time at this rock 🙂 The sit down was obvious, but I didnt find many features to hold on. For one hold you need a lots of imagination and faith 🙂 I already had a possible sequence in my mind back in 2015, but I was just weak to do so. It remained a dream until 2019. After my long rehabilitation time, I finally was able to add two super hard moves to the existing boulder problem, and it feels jsut great to be back on the boulders, once again. One of the best climbs I every did.”
