July 28–31, 2019: Granite Climbing—Piz Badile Northeast Face

To the observer, it appears so imposing, unapproachable, and as smooth as a wall: the northeast face of Piz Badile in Bergell. This makes it all the more astonishing that the first ascenders found a route through this seemingly featureless bastion of compact granite. Riccardo Cassin—to whom I pay my highest respects here—once again demonstrated incredible intuition as he carved out a route via cracks, dikes, ledges, and chimneys up to the north ridge, which ultimately led him to the summit.
After the beautiful “Via Felici” route at the Albigna Reservoir, which I used to warm up with my guest, we set out the next day: We followed the approximately 25 pitches of enjoyable granite climbing, and I had to realize once again—as on almost every alpine climbing route—that it’s not the key pitches (rated VI+ here) that are (purely intuitively) the most difficult, but rather the infamous “V-Chimney” in the upper section of the wall (currently rated V, originally rated III!!!); an extremely hold-starved passage that would surely “take the wind out of the sails” of any modern (sport) climber…