We decided to climb a route which we had previously climbed on our first day in Arco, as we knew if was an enjoyable route and some friends from Munich were also planning on climbing the route. The route is a 9 pitch UIAA 5-, which is adequately protected by bolts.
Unfortunately being a both a high quality and easy multiplitch climb, the route is very popular. We didn’t arrive particularly early and found a long queue to get started on the route. Eventually Becky and I managed to get started and made our way up the first pitch which was an enjoyable warm up. As we were waiting to start the next pitch the team of three in front of us were not doing anything at the belay for ages, and appeared to be adding an extra pitch from their tree belay to the official belay, so we decided to overtake, which would turn out to be a very worthwhile decision.
The next pitches were enjoyable with no real queuing and fun climbing. Unfortunately there was a major traffic jam at the base of the crux pitch due to a very slow team of three a number of teams in front of us. We waited patiently in queue with two Italian teams in front of us before starting out turn up the crux pitch.
As I was setting off up the next pitch all hell started to break loose due to a team of two Austrians very rudely and dangerously overtaking multiple other parties at the previous belay and as they were climbing the crux pitch. I was certainly glad to have been far enough in front to avoid this!
After another few pitches of climbing we caught up with the traffic jam again, due to the hard move off the final belay. There was another very long wait at the penultimate belay before we could continue our climb to the top, thankfully the Austrians didn’t try and overtake again and at this point just waited in line!
The climbing was really enjoyable and a great warm up for the rest of our trip. It was just a shame there was quite so much queuing.
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