Finale Ligure Italy 7/29

Ok, so the first 5 pictures from this post go with the last part of it about Verdon Gorge where we drove after climbing at Finale.
Mikey is standing on top of the route we are going to do the following day. We did 4 repels down this cliff about 470 feet before starting our climb back up. The first ledge below him with the big bush was roughly the length of the first repel, so that plus 3 more down was where we started and we were not even half way down the entire cliff.

Standing on the edge of the cliff with the route below me.

View of the gorge from the road that winds along it.

At the end of the gorge is a huge man made lake, that tuns of people come to for swimming and boating. While we were standing here on the bridge watching people there was a guy that hiked up to the highest point on the path going up the rock on the left and jumped off at least a 60 foot cliff.

Mikey standing next to the edge of the windy single lane two direction road. If he were to hold out his hand and drop a marble off the cliff it would fall close to 1000 feet prior to hitting the rock below.



OK, and due to my pour bloging skills, the pictures below are from the begining of the day from when we were climbing in Italy at Finale.

Climbing Satanasso 7a

Working the upper section of Zambarinik

second pitch of Zambarinik 6C (should be first picture of this route)

The buldges on Satanasso are very steep as the wall goes in and out 4-5 feet a couple times through the route.

Mikey making me look good on Satanasso

Today we woke up and went strait to Sector Fenia o Anfiteatro at Monte Cucco. This is definitly an excelent area for climbing and we´re fortunite to have had the recomendation. There are 1000´s of routes in Finale and many different locations. The first people we talked to about coming here said not to bother because all of the places they went were no good, thankfully the people we bought the guide from were huge fans and gave us great info on where to find the good climbing.

The first route of the day was ¨Dobermann¨ 6a, and I think it was twice as greasy as any route I´ve ever been on before. Next up we were going to get on Ubrecche, but before we could a German guy came up and asked if he could climb with us, we quickly accepted, and he subsequently talked us into doing ¨Coconut¨6c, as he said the quality was much better and it was less pollished. Coconut was amaizing and as it turned out that he had done much climbing in this area we followed his recomendations for the rest of the routes for the day and they were all of excelent quality. Next up was ¨Satanasso¨ 7a, and ¨Cianbalaur¨ also 7a and both in the great routes of the trip. The last climb at the area we wanted to do something a little longer than one pitch, but ended up doing two pitches as one with the 70 meter rope, stringing together the first pitch of Ottico 6a and the second pitch of Zambarinik 6C, with the second pitch being every bit of a 5 star route.

After the climbing we couldn´t help but go do some swimming at the beach, figured swimming in Italy shouldn´t be passed up. The water was warm and the beaches were packed, many thousands of people.

After the beach, we drove to Verdon George in France. Some people have said that the Verdon is the Grand Canyon of Europe, well, the Verdon is at least as impressive, and given that it's limestone, I'd say more attractive from a climbers perspective. The Verdon has the most bad ass narrow windy road that overhangs the sides of it for miles. And at the far end is a huge lake to play in. After taking 2+ hours to drive around it we finally found our route for tomorrow and a campsite not far away.