New climb on Cima Busazza in Italy in honour of Tomas Franchini

After the Christmas holidays chaos, I always have a break in January. It has always been a time for me to go climbing, and thus of pleasant memories; last year, for example, I went to Patagonia, while on 19th January 13 years ago I was with my brother on Lisa dagli occhi blu on the Crozzon di Brenta. After our ascent, this 1997 masterpiece put up by Roberto Parolari and Maurizio Piccoli became a classic winter route.

This year, I also had a few days off, and Emanuele Andreozzi suggested a day out in the mountains. Cima Busazza has always been one of my favourites. I’ve climbed its ridge a couple of times, and twice previously I’ve ventured onto its north face.

It could easily have been a dream face, but for me and my brother, it had also been a nightmare. In 2010 I watched him fall there; he nearly lost his life. Two years later we returned and forgeda beautiful new route which we aptly named Sogni ed Incubi (Dreams and Nightmares).

The night before the climb with Emanuele, I hadn’t been able to sleep; I had too many doubts about the climb we were about to do. I had thought that this wall might bring us bad luck. I replayed in my mind the image of my brother falling, over and over again. Lately, I’ve always started thinking the worst.

I had also been worried about the approach; would it be long? Would we have to break trail. How much fresh snow was there? Would it be dangerous because of avalanches? Or, on the contrary, would there be enough snow to ski back down? I kept telling myself that I would try to be cautious at every stage of the climb. I trusted my climbing partner: he was a friend, someone I held in high regard, an expert at this kind of climbing. He also knew what it meant to get injured in the mountains, and he had therefore approached them with respect.

At 4:45 am, we left the car park. I remembered the other two times I had approached this wall. With Tomas, we had bivvied at the Presena Basin; he had really enjoyed bivouacking. We had done it without skis, and I remembered getting frustrated because he hadn’t sunk into the snow, while I had. Many times, it had really seemed like he could fly. I miss him; climbing with was really different from climbing with any other partner. He was very talented, but we also had a bond that you can only have when you grow up together.

We started the climb, and I enjoyed every moment of it. Emanuele and I worked well as a team, everything ran smoothly. We used a range of cams from size 0.3 to 2, and a set of microfriends to protect ourselves on the tricky sections. I only left two pegs in-situ.Even on the descent, everything went well, and we returned to the car 11 hours after we had set off.

I had met Emanuele thanks to Tomas; we had planned a trip to Pakistan together. Our goal had been the untouched north face of the 7000er Trivor Sar. Due to Covid, our trip had been cancelled. We would never get the chance to try it together.

We had decided without a doubt what to call the new route: Tomas. It had certainly been in the right place, and the climbers who had followed it would surely have thought of him for a moment. His spirit had returned to that wall; I thought he would have liked that.

It’s been a long time since I’ve established a new route, partly because I’ve always enjoyed repeating existing routes. Tomas, on the other hand, really enjoyed exploring new terrain. Now I realise that I’m motivated to leave his name on other walls too, since sadly, he can no longer do this himself.