You never know. Well, that’s so true, and we proved it yesterday, our first day back home, when we spent the afternoon at a crag we normally would have scorned, Le Pozze. Located in a narrow gorge on a river that has considerable water even in the summer, the crag is somehow gloomy, humid and more often than not chipped.
But it is one of the climbing areas closer to home, and one of the few suitable for this heat.
We did not have many alternatives, considering that we woke up at 1.30pm and were both still dizzy from the jet lag; but surprisingly enough, we managed to enjoy the slippery holds and secluded feeling. A crag 30 minutes from home is a luxury that demands to be acknowledged, but we did not realize that until we moved to a place where the closest outdoor climbing is 6 hours away.
Thus, we looked at it with different eyes. With a hint of nostalgia, too.
There is not much choice of routes, and the schedule allows for little variations. We had never warmed up on the 5.11a crack that follows on the left the daunting bombé (the hard routes on the overhang are a chipping fest, but would have been unclimbable otherwise), and I proposed to climb it for a change. I reckon that I wouldn’t have ventured to do so, hadn’t it been for our trips to New River and Devil’s Tower. I never thought that the bolts were out of place on the crack of Le Pozze, and I still don’t think there’s much to say about them, since they belong to a different age; but I am pretty sure nobody would have thought of bolting that line, in the U.S.
Yeah, that’s right, I have a crush for cracks, I admit it. And yet, crimping our small, nasty crimpers felt so good!
We would never have thought that we could travel from the United States to climb here, in this crag from the 90s; 8000 kilometers to get here and climb 4 pitches in a late summer afternoon. That amounts to a ratio of 2000 kilometers per pitch: we’ve broken all previous records!
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