60-Year-Old Solos New 320-Metre A2 in Greece

Vangelis Galanis has made the first ascent of an impressive route on the west face of Kapelo Peak in Meteora, Greece, which he named Dietrich Hasse, who pioneered several routes in the 1970s. Galanis rope-soloed the 320-metre line and graded it A2.

He first noticed the potential new route in the 1990s while on a trip with Hasse, but the two climbers opted for a different route at the time. Then two years ago, Galanis opened two shorter routes on the spire-like feature. After doing some research, he discovered that the tower’s name was Kapelo, which is the Greek word for hat.

“The old days are gone but the memories are still alive,” Galanis wrote in his Facebook post about the route, which you can see below. He said that the entire route can go free with the exception of an overhang on the sixth pitch.

On Planet Mountain, Galanis wrote about his rope-soloing experience on Kapelo, saying, “Solitary climbing on a long and hard route exceeds the given limits of climbing and it is nothing more than an extreme way of communicating with the deeper self, a long dive into the personal abyss.”