Back to the old, good and solid

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Just the next day after our arrival it was time to head back to the rock walls. Three days by car takes its toll and expectations weren't high for the  1st climbing day. Goal was to climb long and beautiful 6 graded routes in a nice environment. Perfect target for the first day was one of our favorite crags, Regina Del Lago at the Ledro Valley.

Approach to the Regina can be hard in a hot summer day due the long and steep path to the crag. 
Luckily our expectations were wrong, the weather was perfect 24 Celsius degrees. Over recent years we have got used to the hot summer days that are exhausting for bikers and climbers and can drain all the energy before the actual activity. But this summer seems to be different. Based on the local's knowledge the whole summer has been more or less colder than usual. Of course 'colder' is not 'cold' in terms of Finns and the temperature is actually perfect for outdoor sports.

Maybe one reason for the cooler weather is the number of Finns around here. For the first time we actually heard a spoken Finnish at the crag, 2 fellow climbers Tero and Viivi from Jyväskylä. They were visiting Lake Garda for the very first time and Tero was getting ready to his RCI (Rock Climbing Instructor) training at the Dolomite mountains. That was a perfect coincidence, we got a RCI candidate to teach rock climbing for our soon to be arriving guests Juha and Niina. Great!

For the 2nd climbing day at 20th of June we headed to the L'Orto that us just at the backyard of Arco. But backyard doesn't mean that the approach is a walk in a park to a picnic camp. Actually it was the opposite. It took about 50 minutes by feet from our apartment at Arco up to L'Orto.

The crag has short to medium length routes with nice and challenging moves. Overall grading of the routes is solid but the routes have started to polish since the last visit. L'Orto used to be known from fresh rock, which it still has, but popular routes have started to polish and the roughness of the rock is permanently lost from few 6 graded routes. Still a good crag to visit!

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Arco, L'Orto-Regina, 19.-20.6.2014