Come and hear a rundown of the CCA’s recent activities plus general climbing news and points of interest, followed by our guest speaker presentation.

CCA members and non-members are welcome.

Guest speakers: CCA members Jack Pezzey, Brian Mattick and Ben Freyens

Jack, Brian and Ben will show slides of their recent, separate trips to the Dolomites, a world-famous, very accessible region of spectacular limestone peaks in NE Italy.  At most two hours’ walk from your car reaches a huge range of climbing, from 3 to 33 pitches, with no altitude problems, usually no snow, often stunningly exposed, and all grades from via ferratas and mid-teen trads (what we climbed) to super hard/long routes.  With accessibility come typical Dolomite features such as howling motorbikes and sportscars, beer on summits and cable-car descents; less typically, we also met an ankle-breaking crevasse, a descent in a kilometre-long tunnel and a karabiner-shaped thigh-branding! 

Pictured below is the Sassolungo group; the isolated spire on the middle peak has a thrilling knife-edge ridge at just grade 13.

Sassolungo (3,181m) is the highest mountain of the Sella Group in the western Dolomites in South Tyrol, Italy. The name translates to “long peak” / “long rock”. Further summits are the Punta Grohmann, Torre Innerkofler, Dente, Sassopiatto and Cinque Dita. The Sassolungo mountain range could be considered the borderline between the Val Gardena and Val di Fassa.