Stefano Ghisolfi Finds His SLAB NIGHTMARE | The Summit Ep.1

Hello and welcome to the EpicTV Climbing Summit. We've invited five EpicTV athletes here to Arco Italy and over the next few days they'll be competing against each other in various challenges from speed climbing, bouldering and an on-site challenge. In this first episode we're giving the athletes the chance to get to know each other by setting them the Comfort Zone Challenge. We've asked them to pick a route that they wouldn't normally try, their Join me as I follow them throughout the day and through the challenges. We're joined by our athlete team made up by Stefano Ghisolfi, our local guide, Matthias Bosch, a super strong comp climber from Austria, Larry Archer from Mexico but now fortunately lives here in Europe and Matthew Phillips who came all the way from London and Beatrice Colli, our fifth athlete. She's not here with us today but she's joining us tomorrow for a speed challenge. We are here in Pizarra because I proposed this place because it's one of the best in Arco. The wall seems like cut with a knife, it's amazing, it's sharp, it's painful and it's beautiful. Okay this is the best wall but behind the trees there are a lot of roots and the wall is like like 6b plus, 6c here, there is an 8c here, 7c plus, 8a here in the corner and then from after the tree there are a lot of hard roots. Yeah so themes, Larissa with Matthias and Matt with Stefano. Does this sound good? Yeah good. Of course the challenge for the day is that we've got to try and climb something a little bit outside our comfort zone. I think it's a great challenge, it's climbing is a very creative sport and it's all about trying to figure out ways around things so pushing yourself a little bit outside your comfort zone it should be fun. So the guys are just warming up Stefano has shown them the crag and they've had a good look at the guidebook. It looks like they might have found their routes for today. Let's go take a look. Something broke. Yeah. That's annoying. Yeah. What broke? I think it's this one. I held it and I was like oh no it might break and it broke. Of course. All right I'm just gonna figure out this section and then I'll I'll have a try again and we'll start at some point. Yeah Matthew is incredible. He has to find a totally different climbing style. I think he climbed one of the hardest routes here that is the 6c. For me 6c is the hardest grade ever so I always find it hard and watching Matthew climbing it was amazing. Thank you for the vlog. Sorry it took a while. Do you think you found your project for today? I'd like to think I'd do it next go but we'll see. So yeah maybe I'll call it project for today and we can always pick something else if it turns up. It's a cool route regardless of what it is. We saw some really cool moves. The left left again. Try and climb everything my left hand. Well I guess that makes sense from that. Yeah I'm gonna try the 8a. I never tried it. I saw someone climbing it so it wouldn't be a good on side because I saw some moves. It's something between flash and on side. I will try. That's something that I would normally not try. Too slabby, too bouldery. Well I think the thing that most impressed me about how Stefano climbs was so precise. His footwork and the holds that he was holding on to. I mean it was only 8a so nowhere near his limit as he said but it was really cool to just watch how he moves on the wall. He's got great fluidity and movement. You can tell that he he's been climbing here for a long long time. Nice. So this should be far from my limit but so slabby and with a small holds. I thought it's much harder than it is actually but anyway it was a it's a good route so if you can climb slab you should probably try it. The first thing that came to my mind was wow everything here is way too hard for me but now actually you start like figuring out and researching like the names and the grades of the routes and there's a lot of variety for everybody. It's a 70 plus called Baraka and yeah it seems a bit longer than the other routes over there I don't feel super comfortable with it because it's like a run out and you never want to run out super close to the ground. We're making makeshift clip sticks because nobody brought a clip stick everybody was banking on Stefano to put up this quick draw. The technique when you don't have a clip stick is that you have to do this I'm gonna be backward. Way better than nothing. It's a strange kind of a style here in Arkoy in where you have to like always make sure that your arms are really high and your footholds are quite low. Other ways if you use higher footholds the crimps got worse. So I think this route is really good for me actually to train that like mental part in where I need to feel control and I need to force myself to be relaxed in a stressful situation where I will be super pumped. I picked an 8b class which is not too overhanging it's almost level. Normally I'm used to climb more overhanging routes and this one has really small footholds so it's definitely out of my comfort zone. It's a bit slippery. It's so slippery. I just go down and tape it a second. I'm bleeding so bad. Yeah I just take out a quick dress I guess. Yeah unfortunately they didn't send my route but I will definitely come back for this one. Okay so that was a wrap on day one. As you might have noticed we're missing an athlete Petrice Colli. However she will be joining us tomorrow for some indoor climbing. I'll see you in the next video.