Prior to coming to Sicily, I found a picture of a formation that needed me to be there. I was hell-bent on obliging yesterday, my first day here, a solo adventure day while wifey is speaking at a conference. Two hours of Palermo traffic, an extra hour of open source GPS map taking me the scenic route out of the suburbs resplendent with dead-ends and miles of paralleling the freeway with no way to get on it only to end in yet more dead ends... and I finally make it to the well-maintained and fast A-29 freeway. I was still psyched and ready for action.

It is mind-blowing how much good looking rock is in just the corner of the island I passed through, not to mention miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) of postcard beaches and bucolic countryside and limestone quarries.

So I make it to San Vito Lo Capo, more or less skip the town and drive around Monte Monaco en route to my destination. Doh! the road I saw on the map to take me the last little bit turns out to be a gnarly steep dirt road with a sign out front: "Privata". I drove back and forth a few times to make sure I was in the right spot- at least the views were not objectionable:



So I backtracked into a rural residential neighborhood, explored a few dead ends on dirt roads, and spied a place to cut through to the cliffs. It was about a mile south of my intended destination:

Right away it's a fun scramble, but reminds me more of my Pacheco Pass adventure than a proper climb. No poison oak here, but after endless scrambling/trversing on stuff like the following, I was bushwacking through slopes of Pampas grass and little palm trees and some thorny bastards that punctured me through my jeans.



The spot I was heading for was the bay below the mountain in the distance here:

The fun continues:


There is another guy soloing along the cliffs in the pic above, but with supertopo compression it is probably a few pixels. He was the only other dude I saw on the rocks all day, and he was staying at one of the houses on the cliffs, one of the many I passed below.

So just when this story is starting to flag, I round a corner and my destination comes into view:

What's that I spy?

I have found it! And holy moly does it look rad. That cave opening is about 2-3 meters high, to give you an idea of the scale.

I left my bag on the lower rock that sticks out into the sea on the climber's right (Honnolding left) of the cave opening). That is a perfect spot for taking hero photographs from this perspective:

Alas I had to enjoy this spot all by my lonesome for the entire afternoon. But, as I was getting psyched up and putting on my bathing suit, sinister and nefarius beings appeared:

They were about the size of a double-fist, appearing in groups from 3-10 feet apart. And they were on the surface, down below, no obvious pattern or way to avoid them. I had no idea if touching these guys was going to be like a sting or like an Oh Sh!t moment as I win the Darwin Awards, what with the already adventurous exit from the sea if that option needs to be exercised. That takes this DWS business up a notch of intensity. The only thing missing really is sharks with fricken' laser beams. I hung out for a long while pondering the remoteness of my position, the lack of any humans to assist me, whether I could swim between them and successfully avoid them if I happened to not fall on them, and considering just how incapacitated I might become if one nabbed me. I thought some more. And some more. I came real close to bailing.





But I didn't. Because my wallet is the one that says BAMF on it.

To be fair, I'm playing up the drama a bit. That's what makes it a story and not just a wikipedia entry on the place. But the jellyfish were real, and did sketch me out. After a while I figured out a pattern that they seemed to hang out near where the fish were schooling, which seemed mostly on the line between direct sun and shade. I did scout out the landing zone as best I could and didn't see any jellyfish in that area. But it would mean a harder escape from the water... in any case, it was all a non-issue. BAMF. Me. I topped out on this mofo three different times by successively more committing routes. What you can't see in these pictures is that the opening traverse coming from right to left is about a 45 degree overhang for a bit, which gets the pump going before you hit the right side of the cave. But, I worked the good rests, and the holds are so positive that it is unbelievable the terrain that a mortal can pull. It was like a juggy gym cave but sharp and somewhat wet/slimy in places.

Here were my routes:

As it turns out, I never got to test how deadly the jellyfish are. After topping out my third route, I saw a couple of ladies who asked me about the jellyfish, and they said that it feels like fuoco (fire) if they touch you. Which to me means that it really sucks, but it would not be body-paralyzing death situation.

But back to this climbing stuff. Ho man does it feel awesome to have your back horizontal and 20 feet above the water and looking up at a CRAZY!!!! overhanging series of roofs like the bottom side of a staircase with giant steps and thinking "I have to pull that or I'm swimmin' with the jellyfish?". That was certainly a go-pro moment if ever I had one. I did find a nice horizontal OW squeeze where I could stuff half my body in and deal with the sharpie scrapes to save my strength, but my neck was killing me from being so overhanging and not having anything to help me hold my head up after a while! This without a doubt ranks as the most amazing sequence of moves I've ever done on real rock, something that I would be too scared to do on lead because of swinging back into the cliff. And with absolute perfect timing, as I groped about on the top-out of my third climb, I felt the lactic acid bath coming on and reaching that brick wall of total muscle failure. Scheizer get that other hand up quick and find something before I blow it... phew! Just an awesome experience. And truly a pity that I don't get any ego pictures of me pulling the gnarliest gnar of all time. It was the kind of experience that I would like to share with someone else, but if the choice is doing it alone or not doing it, I'll deal with it!

Now, the question is whether I'll talk wifey into coming back to this spot, or doing some multi-pitch stuff to get properly high. And for today, I've got some work to deal with (not a fully proper vacation) which is perfect timing while it rains in Palermo.

Edit: Here's a pic with people (I found this on the 'net) so you can see the scale better: