Joy Division in Val di Mello (Italy) repeated by Alessandro Larcher & Pietro Vidi

The young Italian climbers Pietro Vidi and Alessandro Larcher have successfully repeated Joy Division, the 800m 8b on the Monte Qualido above Val Di Mello. The pair spent 4 days on the 20-pitch route, hunkering down in their portaledge for 2 days to wait out the bad weather.

The route - a logical connection of the existing lines Forse si, forse no (Igor Koller, Peter Machai, Miro Piala, 1996), Mellodramma (Gianni e Paolo Covelli, Silvio Fieschi, Fabio Spatola, 1989) and Melat (Sonja Brambati, Adriano Carnati e Paolo Vitali, 1993) - was established in 2004 by local legend Simone Pedeferri, who climbed the route in sections, on separate days. Since then, there have been very few free ascents, notably by James Pearson (2011), Jacopo Larcher & Barbara Zangerl (2021) and, earlier this year, by Jonas Schild and Thomas Schmid.

After the redpoint Vidi commented "What an adventure it has been! 4 days on the wall, 2 of which were spent under the water, trying to climb as many wet pitches as possible and patiently waiting for some sun to come and dry out the rock, just for it to rain again immediately. Huge thanks to Alessandro, who on his first big wall experience kept the stoke high, even in the worst conditions and sent the route too! We both led the two 8b pitches and the 8a, swinging leads on the many (seriously sandbagged) 7th grade pitches. We climbed the whole thing ground-up, with no prior inspection, except for the first pitch, which due to the heat and tight weather window, we left for last and climbed right after we came down."

Larcher added: "It was a few seasons now that Pietro and I wanted to climb something big together and, finally, this September we found a gap in our tight schedules! After having finished University in July, I put a lot of effort into multipitch climbing this summer and when Pie asked me to try Joy Division with him, I couldn’t refuse, it felt like the perfect icing on the cake. This route has it all, it is hard, long and demanding! It was a true battle physically but especially mentally trying to keep the stoke high even when we were in the portaledge under the rain for almost 2 days. I’m grateful to have shared this adventure with Pie and I’m already looking forward to our next project together!"

Asked by planetmountain about the somewhat unorthodox style of ascent - ie freeing the first pitch the morning after they had descended, Vidi explained "Yes, it's somewhat particular. On big walls everyone chooses the style they prefer most, the important thing is to be clear and honest about what you get up to. There are so many different styles and sure, some are better than other. The best being ground-up onsight, for obvious reasons. In truth how we did it was probably even harder, because after 4 days on the wall we were pretty demolished. And, interestingly, we'd already both freed that pitch 2nd go a few days early. It certainly wasn't our strategy to make things easier, simply, we hadn't expected it to be that hot. As I said, some styles are better than others, but given the conditions we're happy with what we did."