Climbing At Finale Liguare

Thursday May 14 was a holiday at CERN starting the second long weekend in May. On Monday I took a late lunch and bumped into a colleague who I had met climbing a while before. Another friend of his was planning to go to Finale Liguare in Italy for a weekend of climbing. He was so kind to invite me along, and not knowing anything about it,  I decided that this sounded awesome and I wanted to join. We set off on our trip Thursday afternoon.

The Journey There

Kacper and Katarzyna picked me up at the CERN main entrance. From there we drove on past Chamonix. We stopped there at an outdoors shop called Au Vieux Camoeur, fantastic place I want to go back and leave more money with them. With some advice from Kacper and Katarzyna I picked up some equipment: two different length slings, three more locking beaners, a helmet, some chalk, and a thin jacket. Now fully equipped for some climbing we moved on towards Genova. At CERN there is almost a communal pool of Mount Blanc tunnel passes, and we used a pass we picked up after the lunch where I met Kacper to head into Italy. It takes about 15 minutes to traverse the 11.6km long tunnel that leads you though under 2km or more of rock.

Cross section of the Mont Blanc (Monte Bianco) showing the profile of the tunnel. Credit to TMB.

After the long dark of Mont Blanc we continued though the beautiful Italian countryside. It quickly flattened out making the driving easier but the view less interesting. A few hours later we arrived in bohemian Genoa. Here we promptly went to the Genoa Brignole train station to meet Tomek, a friend who was waiting at Genoa Principe. After clearing up the confusion we met at an excellent little back by the main exit of the Principe train station where they serve beer out of nicely chilled glasses. We waited for another hour for the last climber, Wojciech, to join us.

With everyone assembled we headed to Finale Liguare and the San Martino camping ground, where we would stay for the next two nights. We arrived well after midnight, but while there was nobody working the gate was still open. We found a nice site and registered the next morning.

Great Climbing and Great Food

With dozens of crags and thousands of sport climbing routes there the area of Finale is an absolute dream for climbing. While there are many guidebooks for the area, the one I saw the most was the Finale 8.0 Sport Climbing Guidebook. Even with the guide and extra topos it could get confusing finding the climbs we were looking for since new routes are added constantly. Overall I found that the climbs ended up being hard for their ratings, especially those set in the 70's.

The first day we explored a crag over the Mediterranean. To access most of the routes there was a traverse, the start of which you can see in the picture to the left. A gorgeous climb with the waves crashing onto the rocks below. Since it was a windy day the traverse on the way back ended up being washed over by large breakers. We ended up climbing up a fair ways to make it over the wet slippery rock. We chose some nice easy going routes to get into the spirit. Most of the pitches were only ~20m long a good practice for me doing my first multi-pitch climbs.

In the mid afternoon we stopped at a bar in Finale where we were served some delicious pasta and enjoyed a beer in the hot Italian sun. After we moved on to explore some climbs in a Grotto. Unfortunately we were running out of daylight on the way to the grotto and decided to get a few climbs in at a crag on the way. I'm still not entirely comfortable with the European rating system, but it seems I can lead a class 5b and follow a low 6.

After the sun set we hiked out with headlamps and made for a pizzeria by the beach to pick up some food. Wojciech had the forethought to pick up some wine to drink when we came through town earlier so had a amazing dinner sitting on the promenade along the beach.

The second day we headed to a series of crags on the same mountain as the Grotto. There were plenty of both multi-pitches (up to about 150m) and tons of sport climbs. While I don't recall the name of the place, I was able to locate it on google maps:

We spent the day climbing and enjoying the sunshine. The view from the crags down the valley with the nearby highway winding down to the Mediterranean was beautiful. That evening we made our way back to Geneva. We dropped of Wojcieck in nearby Savona where he found a ride home via blablacar. We grabbed some pizzas, a bottle of wine, and ate by the beach. On the way back we stopped for gelato and then settled into the car for the long ride back to Geneva. Arrived home happy if tired around 1am. Spent my Sunday relaxing, working on photos, and starting to write blog entries.