New multipitch climb at Meteora in Greece by Luca Giupponi, Rolando Larcher, Maurizio Oviglia

In 2014 I paid my first visit to the conglomerate towers of Meteora in Central Greece. Back then I got a fairly good introduction to the climbing and the local ethics thanks to Petros Lappas (now a renowned manufacturer of climbing bolts), and he also introduced me to some local climbers, including Vangelis Batsios. After repeating a couple of routes with Petros, my partner and I climbed the famous Action Directe (established by Vangelis himself many years ago) and the no less popular Traumpfeiler, one of the Dietrich Hasse classics. These routes were more than enough to give me a basic idea of what the area was about and to start dreaming, one day, of tracing my own route up one of these incredible towers.

I was particularly impressed by some towers above the village of Kalambaka and I promptly asked Vangelis if it was allowed to establish bolt-protected routes here, since it seemed rather unlikely to be able to climb them with other means of protection. He answered yes, as long as one complied with the local ethics, ie, ground-up, and no bolting on abseil... At this point it's worth specifying that Meteora is a pocket where some Saxon "ethics" still survive, and of which the locals are very proud of. In short, it is one of those places where you can't just do what you want, but you have to comply by following the age-old motto "I don't get it, but I'll accept it." ;-)

For several years that idea remained nothing more than a thought in the back of my mind as I didn't get the opportunity to return to Greece, although I did always remain in contact with Petros. After the pandemic, I spoke to Luca Giupponi about my project and he was immediately keen. We were joined by Rolando Larcher (a bit more skeptical than us due to the conglomerate rock and consequently the difficulty of establishing a route in our style, which notoriously makes use of cliff hangers); we knew his lapidary comment "I'm only coming to belay you" wouldn't hold true. And so after a 7-year break our team reformed: it wasn't since Mexico that we'd climbed a new route together. By now we're all well over fifty and struggling with various niggling pains but despite it all, we're still bubling with ideas and enthusiasm.

Our start, on day one, was somewhat disastrous and demoralising. We'd noticed a line but, after more than three hours battling up a dirty and difficult pitch, we all decided to give up and try our luck elsewhere. We quickly realised two things: one, that the conglomerate is much more difficult than it looks from below and, two, we wouldn't have got anywhere with our cliff hangers. In a nutshell: you need to drill while holding the slopey pebbles with one hand, hoping that they don't suddenly pop out... talk about thriller!

Bearing this in mind and after having shared our thoughts with Vangelis, we turned our attention to a more feasible target on more solid rock. Or rather, on rock that wouldn't require two days of cleaning for each pitch. The Suorloti tower, located above the village, seemed much better than the one where we'd just attempted but in order to avoid any nasty surprises, we decided to repeat an existing route first. A quick ascent of Sophokles put up by Aris Theodoropoulos enabled us to identify our line and later that same day we began our new climb. During our week-long stay the temperatures dropped significantly; the face was exposed to the icy winds from the north that blew constantly and this certainly didn't make matters easier, rendering the ascent more similar to a Patagonian than a Mediterranean adventure. Nevertheless, after just three days of suffering we completed our line, while on our last day we managed to free it. We reckon that, despite the fact that the route is easier than our usual outings, it nevertheless took us quite some time to establish, probably due to the fact that the rock and the ethics required an extra effort on our part. I.e. no aid climbing between pieces of gear and no other trickery. This is important to us: it's better to make the first ascent of something simpler, than to make a deal with the devil!

Since there is already a historic route by Dietrich Hasse (a great expert and rock climbing pioneer here) which cuts diagonally across the entire face, we couldn't help but cross it. Considering that his route is called Hypotenuse, it seemed appropriate to call ours Pythagoras.

Despite the poor weather, we still managed to have a great time. In addition to Sophokles we repeated a beautiful crack climb, Corner of Madness; the routes here generally have names in three languages; primarily in German, then in Greek and finally, though not always, in English. And then we absolutely couldn't miss out on climbing the incredible Spindel spire, ascended by the two climbing legends Heinz Zak and Kaspar Ochsner. The normal route up this almost 55m high tower was described by Rolando as "one of the best 5 climbs of my life." Now that really is saying something!

We would like to thank Vangelis Batsios - his new guidebook to the area will be out in a couple of months - and Petros Lappas for his hospitality. Who knows... maybe we'll see each other again. Now that we know the name of the game, maybe next time we can raise the bar a notch! ;-)

by Maurizio Oviglia (CAI, CAAI, Alpine Club)

The first ascensionists would like to thank Petzl, La Sportiva, Montura, Mammut, E9 and Totem Cams

TOPO: Pythagoras, Sourloti Tower, Meteora