Remembering the great Bruno Detassis I had the wish to read what is written on the opening of the street Barrel Organ in Arco di Trento! I wonder if one day you'll seize that way ...
Limestone and drought: the valley of the Sarca
"A Trento, in the wilderness, heard of the Reed Organ on Dain, above Lake Toblino. I knew that had already been tried. "
If you follow the road along the lake in Sarche Toblino, you can not help but look up and see this amazing rock structure that forms the southern extremity of Little Dain. Bruno began his adventure with his friend "Riz", aboard a rickety bike, which somehow led them to Toblino, as he says quietly. "We left the bike at the house below, along the road, and quickly went on the attack. Riz to say: "Get the rope and the bag and meanwhile go on easy rocks to the hoof," and I apart for some time. Without even ten feet, he calls me and says "here you go higher." The reach and prepare. Climb with some difficulty, where it begins reaching for the Reed Organ and really where does the hoof. Here are the nails with string, premuso of the first attempts. This
hoof, from below, it seemed easy. Instead, it is everything "wrong", all vegetation. We attack the dihedral a bit 'dirty with dust, leaves. The difficulties continue until we reach a smooth crack. To our right, moved into a niche we see a nest made of large branches. It was certainly of some bird of prey.
overcome the gap. It 'too late. We have no water. The thirst is felt. We climbed from late morning until the evening, in a stifling heat. So we decided to camp out there. Up to this point I only used nails to stop. We only had nails craft, made by me, running or Stenico. Lucky us, we had an ice screw, of the military, I had brought dall'Adamello. Penetrates into the rock to secure the ring and gives us the security of the bivouac. The place is small. Riz is a little 'sitting and a little' feet. I'm up all night on that thin terrace. It 'been a warm campfire, but we were tormented by thirst and had leg cramps. At dawn attack directly on a rock that has more of the brick of the limestone. I get up about ten meters, planting three or four nails. At one time flight. As I flew, the nails came out. The flight was delayed by a nail to another, so Riz came to retrieve the rope. I stop at the famous nail Adamello, without consequences. I light a cigar, but dall'arsura throat, do not feel it. So I start to chew. I offer an even refusing to Riz. Riz to say: "You try to make this length of rope, because I so tired hands, which I think would not make it anymore." "If you can not do it, who goes up there? Not me. Look, Bruno, if you want I play the harmonica all the time you exceed this stretch of wall. " I try again. Plant a few nail. I do not waste time and eventually win this treacherous wall of rock hard, brittle for its formation almost chalky. You could not afford to stay long on the holds. I remove the nail in the Adamello Riz, I think there should be more. And so, by a rope to another, with less difficulties than before, we are at the top through the plant and we can take a well deserved rest. Heading south, along the side of Sarche, not to go to the country and go around the longest. With some abseiling we find ourselves on a track to track. We arrive at the house where we left the motorcycle. There is a beautiful fountain. Come in to refresh and clean our, because we are full of dust and earth. We have a thirst that does not give us peace, but do not want to drink plenty of water. A boy, for pennies, brings us a basket of grapes and figs.
This climb, I admired the base thinking it was about five hundred feet, turned out instead of three hundred. We used more than twenty nails.
"In my opinion this climb with the features for free that I did, because the rock is considered unsafe and the means we had then, it is certainly the most difficult climbing I've done."
La Organ Pipe is an example of a climb that is devalued with the passage of time. All repeaters face the same difficulties, the nails are short and uncertain, the rock is crumbly.
rating Alessandro Gogna, framed in a historical context-bound climbing the thirties is significant: "With this, the thirty great guide not only overcame the most difficult journey of his career but gave the beginning, well in advance, a movement that would lead to the seventies to the enhancement of climbing Sarca Valley (1). Detassis, in his interviews do not ever devoted large space to the dihedral, the way Reed Organ was for him an exercise gym, albeit extreme commitment. An exploit that did not involve what Rudatis, that year, he called the "sentiment of the peaks." The "feeling" of Detassis was elsewhere, and true on the high peaks of the Brenta Dolomites or the other large. Yet, according to many modern climbers, the Reed Organ is a continuous series of steps VI and VI +, with peak-VII required, without nails and soft rock. With this undertaking, truly memorable, it begins to fall the great movement of the thirties. It was the last genuine undertaking higher VI, the last touch of the artist before the war (2). And 'perhaps too much to speak of seventh grade, but there is no question the absolute value of the street, making it perhaps not very attractive or entertaining than others, but certainly more fascinating for those who want true taste of mountaineering in the full sense and make a journey through the footsteps of the first climbers, smell a bit 'of climbing history of those magical thirties.
(1) In truth, the Organ Pipe is the second new Bruno Detassis on the walls of the valley of the Sarca. In fact, October 22, 1935 with Rizieri Costazza Stenico Marino and overcame the large dihedral of Monte Casale, a high wall a thousand feet, with difficulty in walking and V ° + VI. The guide 'Routes of rock and caves of the Upper Garda "defines" the way at times extremely brittle, with delicate passages. Risk of shock and stones. It 'difficult to use nails and other artificial means. Away completely for free. " (Pp. 188-190). Along with mountaineers as well Stenico Detassis and Fox, Miori Friederichsen and helped to give a decisive impetus to climbing on the walls of Valle del Sarca.
(2) Alessandro Gogna, Vertical Paths, p.. 104
