Those were the days

A fair share of the history of climbing was written in Arco and the Sarca Valley. Climbing in the Alps was born in the mountains, at high altitude, and later reached the lower valleys. From the Dolomites as far as the shores of Lake Garda between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s. Back then, mountaineers had started trying their hands on shorter, though technically more and more demanding routes. A new movement was about to take shape, without anyone properly planning it, nor being aware of it; this was a new form of climbing which would have become something different, a marvel in its own right, bearing its own identity, its own canons and regulations. At the beginning there was but a handful of people: Manolo, Roberto Bassi, Heinz Mariacher, Luisa Iovane and a few others. They were pioneers of a new style of climbing, which did not necessarily relate to hiking at altitude or going to the mountains any longer. This small group of climbers also represented the hard core of La Sportiva technical consultants and collaborators at the time. They were at the forefront of this shift in the technique and manner of climbing, at the same time giving precise indications on how climbing shoes had to be modified and manufactured. Up to then, climbing shoes mainly had to be durable, offer support and protect the foot of the climber; from that moment on, it was clear that their main task was to grant the highest possible level of performance. These men and women stemmed from the mountains and their background was the wild and instinctive mountaineering of the Dolomites, featuring crucial movements of brittle rock, their credo being that a fall was simply not contemplated. Ever. Up to then, falling while climbing had to be avoided like the plague. Climbing on the more reassuring terrain of the valleys below, instead, allowed them to reach their technical limits and enjoy this experience in a new, playful and free manner. Climbing on the Spiaggia delle Lucertole in Arco meant carrying the values, the ethical vision and the rigour of climbing in the mountains and of mountaineering with them, while at the same time leaving the risks and limitations of big-wall mountaineering, such as the Dolomites, or mountaineering at altitude behind.

Soon, that small group of mountain people, dragged away from the Dolomites, discovered a new way of climbing on limestone single-pitches, equipped from above, where they only had to push themselves beyond their physical capabilities, until a series of individual, unique, really tough movements allowed them to find a solution to seriously hard problems. Those tight-fitting, light climbing shoes possessing a magic sole, as well as safe protections, brought about technical progress. To begin with, it was not enough to be mountaineers at the crag: you had to become an athlete and train. In the Sarca Valley you had to be a daredevil, a juggler, an innovator and climbing was something new. You had to smear your foot on the holds as opposed to resting them on the shoe edge, as if you were going up a ladder. Climbers used their soles and adopted friction climbing, as well as using the inner and outer part of their feet, and not their tips only any longer. Heinz Mariacher and Roberto Bassi punched a hole through the ultra smooth Swing Area wall with a hand perforator for the first time in 1983. From that moment on, protections at a crag would have been put where nature allowed to climb free, with one’s own strength alone, and not only where you could place a piton. A decisive moment, a cultural revolution was taking place. From then on, climbing equalled going up with one’s own strength. Other walls were bolted thereafter, such as the famous Spiaggia delle Lucertole, Massone and San Paolo. The routes grew in numbers.