A yellow nightmare
 
Yellow, yellow everywhere. Yellow cubes of different sizes, a vertical so absolute it bends backwards as I reach toward it. I know the rock of the Tre Cime of Lavaredo very well. Years and years of feeling those little holds of the north route. Every time I fall in love with the "marzon" ("nasty friable rocks") that must be faced with the delicate movements of body and mind. I always come away feeling drained and empty. I love free climbing, improving myself all the time, facing challenges and not compromising.
 
Of all the modern lines and old artificials, the horizontal roof of the Couzy reigns supreme: continuous vaulting between the dated and insecure pitons left by Desmaison and Mazeud more than forty years ago on the overhangs of the West Peak of Lavaredo.
 
A magic line: a dream that was becoming more of a nightmare as each night went by as I was tormented by virtual monsters called the "yellow monsters of the west". I didn't know if anyone had free climbed it, but I knew that it would become a "problem" for free climbers within the year.
 
Once I had finished my apprenticeship on all the historic routes of the Tre Cime, inside of me I knew I was capable of conquering the high difficulties of the decaying and precariously pitoned walls. Maybe I had become one with it. And so I tried...

An omen and the "Couzy" becomes an obsession
 
At the time Rita was my companion and maybe one of the few companions who were willing to live with my insecurities. From the outset, I decided not to bend the "Couzy" to my needs: no bolts to be added, just small reinforcements at the belays where pitons already existed, left by the French team. My seconds had to be safe! I wanted to free climb it where it read "this is where the A4 first made its appearance in the Dolomites" or "one of the most spectacular and complex artificial routes in the east Alps".
 
The first pitches in that first year of tryouts were spent thinking about the future. Resting on the pitons, sure, but not pull myself up on them. I wanted to know if free climbing it was possible. Once we had linked all the pitons we could find, I understood that only few climbers had passed by there. "Shit! What a mess!" was all Rita could say when she saw how precarious those pitons were. We gave up after the third pitch..." it looks hard, very hard". Climbing it started to look impossible. "Ok, let's go home". I let Rita down telling her to put pitons as she went along. I would come down backwards seeing that it was the only way we could come back down safely. Rita assured me from below and I started my descent until a piton came off in my hand... thank goodness it wasn't the one I was hanging from! The rope was swinging all the way down, and it made me think of the worst. I carefully continued my way down backwards. We touched ground a few hours later. I felt beat after my first round on the "Couzy".
 
Act two of the story came a year later and it was blonde Rita who followed me once again, without a fingernail which she had left behind on a wintry Mangart... This time I brought bolts with me which I would use only at the belays.
 
CI started my "renovation" of the second belay... only that it was less a renovation and more a demolition of the rock with a perforator. The sound of the hammer reverberated from the hammer all the way down to my feet. A strange feeling. Or, in other words, very frightening. "That's it! I've had it with this route!"
 
That promise soon was forgotten and, three years later, I was back at the west peak. I returned to the unstable piece of rock and I moved along its sides looking for a new way up. Nothing had changed, the empty sound was still there and thoughts of a definitive surrender was all I could think of. "That's really it! I can hear a voice inside me telling me to quit, the voice of fat..." It sounded like this time I was serious.

Eclipse 1999
 
Surf, mountains, more surf and more mountains. Mountains and projects. I often spoke of that route with my friends and my friends always helped me to remember it. At Manuel's house I happened upon some footage of a winter climb of the "Couzy" and a comment reminded me that this was the anniversary year of that climb: the Frenchman climbed it forty years ago. "Yes!" "Come on Bubu, let's go", said Manuel "but you're leading!".
 
That said, I spent all summer preparing the route and free climbing the first part. It looked so difficult and stopped at the fifth pitch on sight: a yellow stairway of backward microscopic footholds. Once again I threw in the towel and gave up. Once again I had given up and this was the last, the very last time. I changed everything: rock, nation and pitons. I went to Rätikon and tried the small but solid footholds of the "Silbergeier" of Kammerlander. I tried for two days and managed to peel all the skin off my fingers and abandoned the project.
 
I was at a crossroads: either I tried this route or I returned to the "Couzy". Confusion reigned in my head and I asked myself what I was doing, if it had any sense or not. The yellow nightmare was still there waiting for me.
 
Manuel didn't come with me, this was a personal battle and I didn't want to deprive a friend of the chance to go where he wanted. At home I try to make a list of possible companions. With Ezio and Fox we finish preparing the equipment for the belays and I start to free up the easier pitches, even if by "easy" I mean 7a and 7c. Manuel returns onto the scene after his holidays. The puzzle is slowly completed and what seemed impossible slowly becomes reality with each day I spend on the route. I free up everything and I get to the last trouble spot, the biggest of all: the final roof. Underneath it I had memorized about 300 metres of footholds and fissures. I was certain I could do it all in sequence, only the roof made me doubt that I hadn't concatenated everything.
 
I didn't think I would climb up in sequence, bit by bit and all rotpunkt. I would have been happy to free climb up, bit by bit at least for this year.
 
I was more and more convinced that I would get to the beginning of August and that only the bad weather would be a problem. I leave with Manuel and on the morning of the 11th of August, the day of a total eclipse, which I had forgotten all about...
 
From seven in the morning to the evening I spend one of the most intense and important days of my life. Everything goes perfectly, all my movements come automatically, like in a dream. Half way up the wall, a cold feeling comes over me and the sky darkens: "oh no! Another storm, nooooo!" Fortunately, once I get to the belay, Manuel tells me "Bubu, you forgot about the eclipse!"
 
I get right under the final roof and I'm so tired but at the same time, so concentrated that I forget my physical state. One look up and down into the emptiness of the West Peak. I leave with few chances of remembering all the single movements and at the third foothold, a piton comes out in my hand and I'm back at the belay. "I have to get out from under this roof". When I retry, I make up a new crazy sequence in one of the most impressive parts of the Dolomites. I shut myself off from the rest of the world and in those few moments I concentrate everything that climbing has ever taught me throughout the years. One after the other I ignore all the old pitons and only when I find myself on the ledge after the roof do I understand that I've made it.
 
The tension leaves me and I reach what in the mountaineering world they call "seventh heaven".