ROCCA DI VERRA
Reachable in the summer rising from Saint Jacques on foot, getting to the Blue Lake in about one hour and a half – trail #7. From here the first ways can be reached in 10 minutes, the furthest ones take up another good hour.
The Rocca di Verra is a big wall, up to 500 meters high.
The most interesting part is the one that overlooks the Blue Lake, but, for the most daring people, there are several other hidden sectors, which may be just as interesting: the most interesting ways start from 2300 meters until 3300, a little more ahead there are the towers of the Gobba di Rollin (Rollin’s Hump) which get until 3800 meters.
The classic ways exploit the weak parts of the wall, rising on edges or on dihedrals; the ways open over the last years mainly unwind right and full over the wall, until getting to the straight lines along big overhangs.
The ways must be considered high mountain ways and not simple rock climbing clinics, therefore all the necessary precautions must be taken: being informed on the itinerary, having a good physical training, informing someone back down in the valley of the itinerary and carrying some winter clothes.
It is useful to have a helmet, nuts, some nails and a hammer.
Who owns a cellular phone should know that, at all events, generally one can get through in the last stretches of the ways, but there is no line in the ways exposed to the North and in the couloirs.
There are several nailed ways with a 10 millimeter pit and about ten ways with classic nailing. From 4 to 6c+.
The ways here presented are all at heights of over 2200 meters.
They all, in a different manner, will present mountaineering problems. Therefore, the attending people will need to have a certain sense of direction; the spitted or nailed line is frequently discontinuous and the progression requires a certain experience.
The information hereinafter reported, on the state of the equipment of the ways, cannot in any case warrant the safety of the alpinist or the climber, who will have full responsibility in evaluating the state of preservation of the material which he/she will find along the wall, as well as he/she will have full responsibility for the techniques used during the ascension.
Mountain and high-mountain are not a rock climbing clinic; the snow, the ice and the cold can often represent serious problems, to face with all the precautions of the case. The falls, the stones, the gullies, the chips and splinters, the evolving fissures and slits require that all the material on the spot be subjected to an attentive control before being used.
Let us not forget that the very practice of climbing in mountain environments involves the knowledge of the risks of the mountain environment, which can only be reduced to the minimum through an attentive progression and by the use of adequate techniques.