With: Petzl
By: Marta Manzoni
The Petzl Legend Tour comes to Arco
“Arco at the time resembled more of a rest home, and there was not even an outdoor store. I discovered the Sarca Valley with Giovanni Groaz, who invited me to climb Mount Brento, and who told me about dolomite walls on the plains, which seemed incredible to me,” says Manolo, a living climbing legend. “I could never have imagined at that time that we were contributing to the birth of a sport-for many of us that became a way of life-that would even make it to the Olympics.”
During the screening, in addition to Maurizio Zanolla, aka the Mago, there are many climbers present who remember the extraordinary history of these walls, interviewed in the film: Rolando Larcher with his son Alessandro – who repeated, among others, the famous route opened by his father, Maratona – Gianguido Dalfovo, Marco Curti, aka Zio Tibia and Mauro Mabboni, and then again Lino Celva, who tells about the pitch Specchio Delle Mie Brame on the Giovanni Segantini route on Colodri. The Petzl Legend Tour Italia, accompanies us, in short docufilms, to discover the symbolic places of the birth of Italian sport climbing in the 1980s, and therefore could only stop in what is still considered the cradle of Italian sport climbing, and pay tribute to its protagonists, starting with Roberto Bassi, the one who marked the “Via”.
Climbing in the Sarca Valley, on the white limestone of Arco and its surroundings, is a unique experience to be had, as much today as forty years ago, when the first climbing guidebook of these places was published by Bassi himself. Memorable pages of climbing history have been written here, by legends such as Heinz Mariacher, one of the strongest Austrian climbers of the 1970s and 1980s. Sometimes it seems unthinkable that Arco is located in Trentino: this magical place, in fact, allows year-round climbing in crags nestled among olive trees or among forests of holm oaks and hornbeams, as well as overlooking the lake, thanks also to the multiple exposures of the walls and a unique climate, while the view is lost on Lake Garda… In addition, the Sarca Valley is also known to climbers for the countless mountaineering opportunities offered by the routes traced on its walls.
The story of this small town is the story of the birth of sport climbing, from the first visionary routes to the birth of the legendary Rock Master, with the iconic vertical wall that is still the gym of the Italian sport climbing federation. Born thanks to an idea by Oscar Durbiano, directed by Klaus Dell’Orto, and written by Laura Giunta, athlete and journalist, the Petzl Legend Tour retraces the historic crags and routes that have characterized, repitch after repitch, route after route, the evolution of sport climbing in Italy.
This journey through time-a real and virtual journey-begins during the pandemic: at a time when it was not possible to travel far, Petzl thought to give a new light and value to the wonderful places we have at our fingertips in Italy. Thus, in the different films, we see climbers of the new generations, with a special focus on female climbers, try their hand at repeating milestones in the history of climbing, while the bigwigs who in the 1980s moved into unexplored terrain, yet to be invented, such as Manolo, Heinz Mariacher, Luisa Iovane, Mauro Corona, Bruno Tassi “Camòs,” Andrea Di Bari, Jolly Lamberti, and Stefano Finocchi, recount anecdotes and timeless challenges of historic routes, still repeated today or perhaps forgotten. A journey in search of the vertical soul, a beautiful initiative of Petzl Italy, which you can follow on the Youtube channel and which excites climbers of yesterday and today.
