Brione

So the plan in Italy was to chill round Lake Maggiore for a few days however i still planned to get some climbing in with a trip or two to Brione. This village is actually only 20mins or so from the Swiss side of Maggiore but involved us crossing the border on each visit. 

There is some major access issues with Brione and so at this time there is no guidebook to the place. However some text messages and emails to Tyler got me the necessary beta. With temps high and this meant to be a quiet week on the climbing front I did not have a large tick list for the place. I simply wanted to try Molunk..a steep arete with weird colours running through the rock (see pic above) that many people had told me was the best 7c they had ever done. 30 mins of work and i got the send. It certainly is a great climb, easyish for the grade but the moves are cool, the setting is sublime and the rock itself is so eye catching its a pleasure to move on it. 

I climbed a few other blocs in Brione over the next two visits we made but really only scraped the surface of the place. There is so much rock up there. Aside from climbing the valley is such an interesting place to visit. It has a massive dam made famous by Bond jumping off it in Goldeneye, numerous bridges across the fast-flowing river and some awesome waterfalls. Turns out at 220m the Contra dam is 20th tallest in the world or around there with the tallest being one in the former USSR at 335m. Anyway enough of this, on to Magic Wood....