Mauro “Bubu” Bole free climbs Camillotto Pellesier, at the Cima Grande di Lavaredo.

One after the other. After the repetition of End of Silence (11 pitches, with maximum difficulty of 8b+) for the collector of extreme routes in the mountains Mauro Bole the moment arrives, for a first free ascent. This time he bags an historical route, “Camillotto Pellesier”, opened with aid climbing by the brothers Minuzzo in 1967, on the North Face of Cima Grande di Lavaredo (2999 m.). A come back to the origins for Bubu, who completes in this way a trilogy on the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, started in 1999 with the first free ascent of “Couzy”, 8b, and followed by the first repetition of “Bellavista" (8c) in 2002.
Here the report of the ascent, written directly by Bole.
Oscar Durbiano

Camillotto Pellesier.
Already in the summer 1999, as I was trying the Couzy, from the starting ledge, I looked at the route established by E. Mauro and M. Minuzzo in 1967, in 9 days spent on the wall, and dedicated to Pellesier. A very easy to find route! Three meters after the start a vertical row of bolts begins, and it continues until the end of the difficulty, after about 300 meters from the base.
In the first days of July I start again with the dear Riccardo Milani, for a series of pull-ups between a piton and the next. With Riccardo I spent several days of last summer in the “cellar” of the Tre Cime, an uncomfortable and cold belay under the great roof of the Cima Ovest, where the hardest pitch of Bellavista starts, a perfect place to hang sausages and to keep cool a good wine. In two days I re-equipped the belays with two new bolts, while leaving the original pitons along the pitches.
A lot of pitons, every 70 – 80 centimeters, but those pitons, sometimes, were only a few millimeters deep in the rock, and all of them were facing downward. Good enough to stand in, but I don’t know if they would keep a fall, even a short one.
Until the great roof I hade fixed a static rope, connecting all belays, to be able to easily descend to the base of the wall, but also to try to free climb the pitches, alone with a self assuring device, possible because of the perfect verticality of the route. After a few days of up and down, spent alone in the wall to find the best sequences for the free ascent, I was able to lead and red point all the pitches. I was with Ghin of Domegge, who had kindly offered to belay me. The final assault was still waiting, for a continuous free ascent in one day.
On Friday, 1° August, already a rule, I start from Trieste at 4 a.m., to avoid paying the toll for the road to Auronzo Hut. Together with Kurt Aster, like a wonder, I manage to redpoint the entire route, despite the few hours sleep of the previous night…. Luckily sometimes those days arrive, in which you recognize that it is the right moment to go.
The biggest reward hasn’t been the tenth grade, though, but surely the beauty of the route, with unexpected solid rock and amazing sequences of movements, as if they had been designed on purpose ….in short, a route of great satisfaction.
On the dark and vertical walls of the Tre Cime I have always spent unforgettable periods, among friends, thunderstorms, breaking holds, big fears…. Nevertheless I love this place and I feel almost as if I were a part a this little/big place in the Dolomites, but to come back again I always need to find something that switches me on like a match…. Then I start full speed, also if the possibilities of free climbing are slowly finishing. I have just completed this route, but now I already feel like starting for another trip in the big yellow … I have already checked with the binocular… and it will surely be another story of vertical magic ».
Mauro Bole