Alessandro Zeni repeats Malvazija (8c+) in Dvigrad

Italian slab master Alessandro Zeni repeated Malvazija (8c+) in Dvigrad, in the heart of Croatian Istria. It is the third ascent of this mythic route in this compact limestone after the first ascent by Maurizio Zanolla “Manolo” in 1988 and the first repeat by American Cody Roth in 2010. Also many other strong climbers tried the route, but until now it counts only three ascents in 35 years. The route is around 15 meters long slightly overhanging slab with some old school chipped holds that require lots of finger strength and excellent foot technique. Manolo graded the route as an 8b+. After some holds broke off, so Cody upgraded it to 8c+.

Alessandro Zeni has repeated many of the hard-core slabs before. We can mention the first repeat of another Manolo’s slab testpiece, Eternit (9a+) or Frederic Nicole‘s legendary Bain de sang (9a), among the many other ones.

Alessandro tried Malvazija (8c+) for the first time last year in April but just for two days. The temperature during those days were too high to try this technical, bouldery and short route, so after three tries he decided to change the crag. This year he came back to Dvigrad at the end of January for two days and he tried it again and on his second day he was pretty close to do the free ascent.

At the end of February he had two more days to try the route. The weather wasn’t so good and he had just one attempt before the rock got wet, fortunately he felt really confident on all the moves and he sent the route. He used the same beta to redpoint the route as Cody Roth did.

Here you can watch the video of uncut ascent by Alessandro Zeni.

Big congrats to Ale!