News from Stiniva, Podstine and MILNA

First the bad news:

As we wrote before, access to Podstine has become more difficult, until somebody finds the energy to bypass the huge house that closed access to the old path. Now the access is definitely not children friendly, but is possible for adults. We explained the new access in the guide. To make things worse for Podstine, several years ago a climber from Italy created several routes with expansion M8 bolts (!?!?!), which was a really bad idea and not respectful to the marine environment and local rules. The routes are already rusty and have been marked as bad in our route list. We appeal to all route setters to contact us before drilling on Hvar, to avoid these situations.

Then some mixed news:

As you know, Pokrivenik is a new area with huge potential. Most of the development has been done by an organised effort, which we wrote about before. Many of the routes have been equipped by inox glue-in bolts, according to local standards. Some of the routes have been bolted with Raumer’s new line called “marine”, but unfortunately these bolts are expansion and not glue-in. These bolts seem to hold well in sector Poseidon, but not so well in sector Barba, which is much closer to the sea line.

Now, several new routes have been bolted by unknown authors, but again with mechanical bolts. This is unfortunate and we understand that part of the blame is on us, because we used the expansion “marine” line so the authors may have thought that these are OK. We do not want more mechanical bolts in Stiniva, Podstine or Pokrivenik, they are too close to the sea line.

So, good news = new routes. Bad news = bad equipment and soon to be rusty. Check out the updated guide.

And finally only good new from Milna:

Gamba Gamba! has seen some several first ascents and the grade is now fixed at 7b. Škura Bura has been downgraded from 7c to 7b+, after several repeats. Milna will see further development of new routes and has become really popular in the last few years. Again, please contact us if you have any plans on bolting on Hvar.