VALLE DELL’ORCO – Single and multipitch routes from trad to sport climbing

Valle dell’Orco & Val Soana

This guide book is the summary of many days spent up and down the valleys, of so many years climbing and is the opportunity to rediscover old friends and get to know new ones. But above all it has been a great opportunity to embark on something new to promote and emphasise the value of the place where we live.

The guide describes crags found in the lower valley as well as the famous Caporal and Sargent walls, including, after such a long time since the last publication, the Soana valley, with Vallone di Forze and the lateral valley of Piantonett, as far as the edge of Lake Teleccio.

Besides the numerous mulipitches, there are lots of crags which even offer trad routes, itineraries which up to 10 years ago attracted the attention of only a few people, but which now motivate many climbers from all over Europe to come and climb here.

This is the definitive guidebook that covers all the Trad and sport climbing in the Orco Valley in the Gran Paradiso National Park in North West Italy. The Orco valley is situated to the north of Turin and west of Milan, and represents some of the best alpine rock climbing in the Western European Alps. The climbing ranges from the sport climbing found in the lower valley to the multi-pitch Trad climbing on the epic big walls of Sergent, Caporal and the Torre di Aimonin, to the cliffs just below the Col de Nivolet.

All the routes are shown on a mixture of colour photo topos and clear hand drawn topos, along with a description. The guidebook covers many multi-pitch routes between 200m and 300m long, and for these routes it describes the type of protection to be found and what trad equipment is required (if any). At the start of each crag is a clear location map, approach details including QR codes for the parking. Symbols then indicate the altitude, orientation, approach time and if the crag has multi-pitch routes.

Published in June 2024 this rock climbing guidebook to the easy accessible Orco Valley is in English text throughout

520 pages,
2024 edition