Triglav Čop Pillar climbed solo by Gašper Pintar

Given Slovenia's size, the breadth of mountaineering talent in this tiny country is astounding. Yet for decades it has continually produced some of the finest alpinists of each successive generation. The sheer number of truly excellent climbers, coupled with the deeply rooted Slovenian modesty, is so high that unfortunately many groundbreaking ascents risk flying under the radar. The most recent one, carried out by Gašper Pintar, is a a case in point. At the end of March the 29-year-old from Ljubljana, who has climbed multiple north faces of the Alps and redpointed up to 9a at the crag (!), spent two days soloing the 1000m high North Face of Triglav. This wall on the highest mountain in the country is inhospitable even in the height of summer, and climbing it alone, via the famous 500m high Čop pillar, underrstandably caused quite a stir among the close-knit Slovenian climbing scene. Had it not been for Luka Stražar and Nejc Marčič, who after repeating the line a week later hinted that this solo was something very special indeed, then Pintar's ascent probably wouldn't have crossed the country's borders. Here's his report.

TRIGLAV ČOP PILLAR SOLO by Gašper Pintar
The route in question is the Čop pillar on Triglav's north face, undoubtedly a piece of Slovenian climbing history. It tackles a major line straight through the big headwall in the middle of the north face and while the 5-day first ascent in 1947 by Joža Čop and Pavla Jesih was groundbreaking, the story of the first winter ascent sounds like a real ordeal, too.

Circumstances allowed me to take time off this winter and to get a lot of climbing done, so I started toying with the idea of a big solo climb in my home mountains. My sights were quickly set on Čop. It subsequently turned out that it had not been done solo in winter before, but all I was looking for was a good challenge and a multi-day climb in my home mountains.

I'd been waiting through most of March to see if good conditions would arise, and at one point I almost gave up on the idea altogether. But then during the last week of March I felt there was an opportunity and I mustered the courage for an attempt. On the first day I climbed Skalaška, an easier classic route, up to the foot of the Čop pillar. It only has a few steeper pitches, which had good consolidated snow on them, so I managed to progress with no belays fairly quickly. The rest of the route is classic chimney, ledge romping stuff. I had enough time to climb the easier bottom part of Čop pillar and bivouacked in the "red niche".

I had planned 3 days on the wall but with a good amount of daylight - it was not calendar winter anymore, although conditions still felt fairly wintery - and mediocre snow conditions I progressed faster than expected. This enabled me to finish the climb the next day. The second day was all about rope-soloing through the 200 meter vertical headwall. I quickly abandoned the idea of trying to free climb it drytooling style, and resorted to french freeing, which made the hardest pitches pass the quickest. At 17.00 I reached the last belay and then required another 4 hours to reach the top of the wall, traverse east and, avoiding the main summit, wade through deep snow to reach the Stanič hut where I spent the night before descending through the Kot valley the next morning.

As a side note, Luka Stražar and Nejc Marčič repeated the climb quickly, in just one day and in drytooling style about a week later. This has also been done before in 2011 by Luka Kranjc and Andrej Grmovšek and perhaps on some other occasions, too. It's a kind of rock that doesn't lend itself too well to drytooling, so I think these ascent are admirable.

While the established grade of the route is VI+, the main difficulty for me lay in the psychological aspect of the ascent. I really felt the isolation. I carried an Inreach device since cell coverage is poor in these areas. I managed the technical difficulties of the ascent alright and, like I mentioned, the steepest pitches passed the quickest due to in-situ pitons. There were, however, a number of sketchy moments on slopes of unconsolidated snow and pitches of lower grade that "surprise" you in winter. The entire outing felt complex and demanded many of the skills needed to climb in the Slovenian mountains. Furthermore it was physically taxing, as self-belaying is a lot of work.

I was very happy to get this climb done. It felt like a real project: I transformed it from an idea that initally felt slightly mad into reality. I've done quite a few north faces in the Alps beforehand, notably the Gousseault-Desmaison and Slovene-Croz on the Grandes Jorasses, the Lesueur on the Dru, the Eiger via the classic north face route, Piz Badile recently with Tom Livingstone via the British route. I've also climbed in Patagonia and summited Fitz Roy via Supercanaleta and Torre Egger via Titanic. However none of these climbs were carried out alone, and the Čop Pillar on Triglav solo felt like my most ambitious yet.

by Gašper Pintar