After a relaxed start to Italy with my parents at Lake Como a few days with good food, good company and a hotel stay, my parents departed for the airport and we set our replacement sat nav for Mello. The aim being to arrive a few days before the infamous festival, giving us time to look around, we had a walk through the valleys and got our bearings and managed an impromptu climbing session on a classic, Jesus Christ Superstar.



Saturday arrived, the comp began and so did the rain, but we got the impression the organisers had seen a washed out festival before. They sprang into action putting tarps up over several of the competition boulders.

Cowering under tarps I hunted out the first problem, an hour or two spent working the problem I had figured out a sequence that worked for me, but after a few solid goes I burst a fingertip, and that was pretty much game over for the festival. Two or three days’ rest had almost heeled the finger and I tried my luck on the next problem, only to rip a huge flapper in the other hand. So I begrudgingly threw in the towel for the duration of the festival. All was not lost we bumped into friends from Albarracin and friends from Savasonna and had two friends from home coming out to join us. So the festival turned into a social event as opposed to all climbing.


As for the climbing of the area we will be back in a few weeks to meet friends Jason and Claire for some serious climbing sessions, but in the meantime we are taking a two week road trip around Italy with our friends Andrea and Steven who joined us mid-way through Melloblocco.