Natural Logic established on Cima Busazza (Italy) by Emanuele Andreozzi, Stefano Falezza

While last winter season the North Face of Cima Busazza was in excellent condition, offering lines full of Alpine Ice, it is currently completely dry. However, on the small buttress to the right of the main face, last year I had already spotted three very interesting parallel corners that are well-suited to be climbed even in these conditions. The peculiarity of all three corners is that they are always completely devoid of ice, even in the most favorable years. Since conditions will never be better than the current ones, why not go? Stefano Falezza agreed with my reasoning and immediately accepted my proposal.

I had already climbed the corner on the right last spring with Fabio Tamanini, when on the 14th of April we established Maledetta Primavera (200m, M6). So now, with Stefano, we wanted to see what the lefthand corner — the largest of the three — had to "offer."

After some misadventures during the approach, caused by my skins deciding they no longer wanted to stay glued to my skis, we reached the base with a significant delay. It was only at noon that a patient and freezing-cold Stefano prepared to lead the first pitch, which surprisingly offered a decent amount of alpine ice. A subsequent pitch on snow led us within sight of the large croner, the day's objective, which now revealed itself in all its glory.

To reach it, however, we had to breach one last obstacle, and it was Stefano who tackled it. It was a small corner, but its start was completely smooth — not only for crampon and axe placements, but it also lacked any semblance of a crack for protection. The best Stefano could do was hammer in a dubious pecker with his axe, take a deep breath, and then launch into M7 terrain, runout on practically non-existent hooks and footholds. Fortunately, after a few heart-pounding meters, the situation improved significantly, both in terms of gear and axe placements. When I joined him at the belay, I couldn't help but congratulate my partner on this lead.

The buttress to the right of the main face isn't very high, offering routes of 4 or at most 5 pitches. So, at this point, only the final pitch remained, and it was precisely the large corner, the day's objective. The first few meters weren't difficult, but as I climbed higher, the difficulty increased, and athletic, overhanging moves alternated with more technical and precarious ones on small edges. There was no respite from the continuous climbing; the blades torqued in the granite cracks, screeching sharply, but in the end, it was my calves that suffered the most, starting to burn more than my arms. After 30 meters without a single rest, I emerged from the corner, and with another 30 easier meters, I reached the ridge, where I set up the belay to bring up Stefano.

To finish the day, all that remained was to abseil down the adjacent Via Teti and finally ski down to Passo del Tonale on what little snow has fallen this winter.

This route, Natural Logic, almost entirely devoid of ice, reminded us of Scottish mixed climbing in its morphology and style, albeit with obvious climatic differences. For this reason, we drew inspiration from it in almost every aspect, leaving the route free of in-situ gear, including the belays. One small difference is that we used two standard pegs on the crux pitch, both of which were left in-situ; only haste prevented us from retrieving them. In Scotland, they likely wouldn't be used, while we decided to include them in our traditional protection rack alongside nuts, cams, and peckers, as pegs are part of our century-old climbing tradition in the Alps. We ask future repeaters to respect our style of first ascent and to not add any further fixed gear. In fact, anyone who wishes to remove the two pegs is welcome to do so, in order to leave the route entirely free of permanent gear.

In short, this and the other routes I've established on this buttress are intended for those who enjoy this particular style of climbing, which is so uncommon here in the Alps, where it often seems — and indeed often is — all about a race to equip and fill our mountains with in-situ gear.

- Emanuele Andreozzi, Trento

Info: emanuele-andreozzi-alpinista.com