Mauro “Bubu” Bole repeats End of Silence, 11 pitches 8b+.

Mauro Bole’s list of long hard routes becomes longer. This time he has bagged the mythical End of Silence of Thomas Huber. The incredible line (11 pitches with maximum difficulty 8b+), opened in 1994, on the Feuerhom, in the Berchtesgaden Alpen, is surely one of the world’s hardest long sport climbing route. Vertical rock, high quality limestone, micro holds and long run outs: these are the ingredients that make the challenge tasty for Bubu, who tells us directly his interesting experience.
Oscar Durbiano

End of Silence.
I felt it, that sooner or later I would have gone there. Only that, like for everything, I had to wait for the right moment. Already in the winter of three years ago, during the Ice Climbing World Cup competitions, with Austrian Hari Berger (winner of the two past editions), we had the idea to go together to try End of Silence. Every year in May we made an appointment, but every time something happened, that brought the mind far away from this project, particularly because of me! But this year, also considering my good physical shape, I have eventually decided to focus on the repetition of this route. I had already promised to Hari to go with him, and everything would have also been simpler, considering the fact that he had already tried it and knew it well. Further, he lives half an hour away from the wall and knows how to do to be able to use the military cable car and spare the two-hour approach through the steep forest. Or at least how to have the permit to use the cable car… But for some reasons it was always too complicated, and we always ended walking up, without having to respect any timetables.
The first day I was truly beaten by the two hardest pitches: 8b and 8b+, respectively. I wasn’t able to understand the sequences of the movements of these two vertical faces of gray smooth limestone. Small and shallow pockets, spread here and there around the line of the bolts. I tried in one way, Hari in another … but none of us was able to find something useful, always and only movements at the limit for fingers and feet. And further, also the other pitches weren’t that easy! Also 7c and 8a pitches require a certain engagement; and a foot on the wrong foothold is enough to jump down. In short, an old style route, where, more than very strong arms, are requested optimum feet technique, balance, finger strength and also a fair amount of imagination.
Because of various commitments and unsettled weather we weren’t always able to go together to the wall, and then the easiest solution was to try the route alone, self-belaying on the fixed ropes placed on all the pitches. I even put up a tent at the foot of the wall, not to have to go down to the car every evening. But often, after a day spent alone up and down the ropes, always with some afternoon thunderstorms, I gave up psychologically… And I told me: “ But who is obliging me to stay here another day, to speak alone with the wall!” In short, it ended always like that; I went back home, another four-hour drive that passed fast, with the mind busy with the moves.
Now I think back to those moments, sitting under the wall in complete confusion, because I didn’t know what to do: to stay there in the silence or to go back to the car, switch on the music and drive back home! When I was twenty these things didn’t happen to me! The days were like hours, nothing was too hard for me… I must be getting older!
But the days ended positively, slowly but steadily I solved what had seemed impossible at the beginning. And also Hari at the phone told me the same things. Therefore for the weekend we agree to try to link all the pitches, but the weather forecast isn’t good and I give up psychologically, I decide not to go and to wait a few more days. On Sunday I get a message from Hari, who has managed to redpoint the entire route in one day… Hari pushes me: he will take a day off to come to belay me on the route: I really have to finish it.
I took a few rest days and then it happened like for the other routes, that physiological switch went on…. Wake up at four in the morning, loud music, the usual four-hour drive, and I meet Hari at the parking lot. I congratulate him for the ascent, but he answers me: “Yes thanks! But now is your day!”
During the two-hour walk he tells me about his ascent and we discuss the moves. Then later in the morning I start with the first pitch, to be faster Hari follows with jumars. On the hardest pitch Hari climbs before me, to mark with chalk all the pockets to be used with hands and feet. Without these marks it would have been much more difficult to find the footholds, but the problem is that the daily thunderstorms washed the chalk away all the times, and to take the wrong hold was unforgiving.
I felt it, that it was the right day, and like a wonder I fire all moves first try. At the end of the 8b+ pitch I slightly sigh, also if “You tell about the dead at the end of the battle”. A 7c was still left, not too hard, but I really didn’t remember it, and then I asked Hari to precede me again to mark the holds… We forgot that being taller than me he used a lower foothold, and when I arrived in the middle of the move with the wrong foot I couldn’t avoid a fall. It seems incredible, it’s only 7c, but if you chose the wrong sequence you can’t go back!
I return to the belay very angry. I start again, and without hesitating, I reach the next belay. The eleventh and last pitch, 7a+, was left, that I dumbly had never tried, because of the ridiculous grade, compared with the rest. A mistake: it would have been better to know it…. You should never underestimate something! Anyway, with the beta from Hari, I reach also the last belay! And as we say in Trieste: “Also this has been done!”
It’s a route of great satisfaction! And it surely one of the world’s best ones, of this kind. Thanks to Thomas Huber for this masterpiece.
Mauro Bole