Capo Palinuro - Spiaggia Della Molpa

The Cilento and Vallo di Diano park, located south of Salerno in the southern corner of Italy's Campania region, has a huge, untapped potential for rock climbing and other outdoor activities. The Molpa beach is currently the most impressive cliff to have been bolted in this area.

In the 1980s Andrea Savonitto, Alessandro Gogna and Giuseppe Miotti established some trad climbs close to Palinuro's natural arch (on the far righthand side of the cliff), on Punta di Cala Fetente and Punta Spartivento. A few years later Beppe Dallona and friends bolted a handful of climbs with some homemade hangers on the lefthand side of the Molpa cliff, close to the beach.

More recently Biagio Orovecchia, Amedeo Polito, Enrico Positano and I, bolted 40+ sport climbs above the beach thanks to the support of the associations Eso Es Palinuro, Climbing House and the Ragni di Lecco. Furthermore, the original routes were rebolted.

Fortunately we did not notice any corrosion on either the bolts or stainless steel 304 belays we'd placed circa 8 years ago, but they were all backed up or rebolted nevertheless. All route bolted prior to 2005 were completely rebolted with stainless steel 304 and 316.

The routes are located in a marine environment and for safety reasons these are checked regularly, but this obviously involves considerable time and effort, both in terms of time and money. This would not be possible without the fundamental support of the Palinuro hotels and numerous technical sponsors, in particular: Petzl, E9, Ferrino, Versante Sud, Berner, Salewa, Climbing Technology, Duegisport, Ukupacha.