Siebe Vanhee, David Leduc sweep up new climb in the Dolomites
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After La Cattedrale and Specchio di Sara up Marmolada and Kein Rest Von Sehnsucht up Mount Civetta two years ago, the Belgians Siebe Vanhee and David Leduc have teamed up in the Dolomites once gain, this time is the lesser-known Pale di San Lucano group where they established a new route up the south face of Terza Pala (2355m). According to initial reports, the route is completely independent and was climbed over two days with a bivouac at circa half height, and one on the summit. The outing is called Spazzacamino, Chimney Sweep, as a result of the terrible fire that devastated the Pale di San Lucano valley in October 2018.
Vanhee sent planetmountain.com the following about the first ascent.
"Spazzacamino, the Italian word for ‘Chimney sweep’, indicates perfectly our experience climbing a new virgin line on the Terza Pala di San Lucano in the mythical San Lucano Valley in the Belluno Dolomites. Last week David Leduc and myself managed to climb this south face in two days. Our goal was the appealing unclimbed headwall. Despite an incredible effort (WHY? => Read below) to reach the base of the headwall we had to change our minds. Prepared with 50 pitons, mobile protection, lots of water, food and bivouac gear to climb the line clean and free, we realised two days on this headwall wouldn’t be enough. The wall is compact and demands some hardcore, time consuming, aid climbing. Maybe even a few bolts for free climbing. One amazing bivouac night past by and we committed to a more obvious line on the right. Two rappels and some traversing brought us at the base of four amazing “Dolomites” pitches up to 7a. This was the very first time I was able to place pitons while free climbing, psyched! I love this feeling of exposure on this kind of terrain while sticking with the pure free and clean climbing ethics.
Dolomite big walls are famous for their ‘zoccoli’, or in English ‘base’ or ‘pedestal’. These are very steep, vegetated terrain or 3rd class climbing, often on loose rock. Climbing the ‘zoccoli’ is necessary to reach the vertical walls. In the case of our first ascent, we had to hike up 500m of burned zoccolo and climb 350 meters of burned 3rd and 4th class climbing. Up to two third of the Terza Pala di San Lucano has been victim to the forest fire in October 2018. Which meant that all the trees and bushes where useless to hold on to, and even worse to use as protection for a fall. The underground was unstable and exists of ashes, dead trees, branches and roots. Basically; high quality sliding dirt. With our headwall objective ahead we were heavy, climbing with 25 kg each as we moved up across this insecure terrain. Only two hours into the climb and we were real Spazzacamino (chimney sweeps)!
An adventure it was! Adventures are inherent to climbing in the Dolomites. These walls are big and logistically complicated because of the lack of water and the complex approaches. For example, aiming for the headwall of la Terza Pala would be more interesting with static ropes, but who would want to climb 800 meters of burned rock and vegetation with this much weight?
I swore I would never be a spazzacamino again! But only two days have past by and I’m already considering going up again… I think this even counts for my partner…"
Links: FB Siebe Vanhee, www.siebevanhee.be, www.petzl.com
