Big new climb on Spiz d'Agner (Dolomites) by Nicolò Geremia, Mirco Grasso

The story of Barbari nel TAO begins at the end of October 2019, with a couple of photos I took of the upper shield of rock on Spiz d'Agner's Punta Frassenè, after having repeated the beautiful Filtro Magico. These two images remained firmly impressed in my mind, one was a little blurry where you could see almost the entire shield, while he other was nice sharp but taken from further away.

At the sight of those two photos, any climber with a deviated mind like ours would have noticed the perfect line of pockets running up this vertical flow of bullet-proof limestone, and we simply had to lay our hands on it as soon as possible! Unfortunately that year summer was over; we briefly considered giving it a go in winter, but then travels and covid got the better of us.

Summer 2020, perhaps in the meantime it had even slipped a little from our minds, but before being able to meet up and discuss future projects, in July I had a serious accident in the mountains which put me out of action for some time.

Between one operation and another, throughout the entire recovery period, I often thought about that face and I came to know every single detail of those two photos... Time went by and finally, more than two years after my accident, we were ready.

We were both eager to climb the shield on the upper section of the mountain, the one in the photos. So, seeing that another route also passes along the ledge at the base of the shield, we decided to try to establish the upper part first by climbing the other route first. If everything went according to plan, i.e. if we managed to find our way through and reach the summit, we'd then return and establish the lower section. Gound-up, of course...

Everything turned out just as we had imagined and in 6-7 days between autumn 2022 and spring 2023 we managed to first establish the upper section, then the lower section and then, using the beautiful and welcoming Malga Agner hut as our base, free all the pitches. The result is a stupendous and continuous climb on awesome rock.

We decided to place bolts at all the belays on the upper section in order to guarantee safety and provide relatively comfortable belays. On the pitches we left a few threads in-situ and a handful of pegs. Only the crux pitch (rated 8a) contains 3 bolts. No aid of any sort was used during the first ascent.

Barbari nel TAO is one of the most beautiful and fun routes I know, perhaps because I dreamt of it for so long and it means so much to me. Who knows, let's hear what those who repeat it have to say!

We wish to thank Linea Verticale Feltre for the gear and the legendary Mountain Film Crew!

by Mirco Grasso

TOPO: Barbari nel TAO, Spiz d’Agner, Dolomites

Mirco Grasso thanks Karpos