Finale climbing

Wild, harsh and featuring an exceptional landscape, Finale and its hinterland are magical and unique: white limestone cliffs that emerge from the luxuriant and deep green vegetation where it is easy to get lost without a guidebook, rocky terraces that suddenly open up the horizon with backdrops that often end with the sea.

The Finale area is a place to explore: even today, after 30 years of climbing and hiking, still leaves room for adventure for climbers, trekkers and bikers… and for anyone who wants to head off into the valleys.

 

In the Sixties, still wearing mountaineering boots, a few mountaineers discovered the vertical dimension of Finale. Since then many bolters, climbers, authors and photographers have turned Finale into one of the most important climbing destinations in the world.

This second edition of Thomas’ guidebook adds, after only 5 years, 58 crags, some new and some recovered, and it has been realised with the latest technology: aerial photos of the walls, QR codes with videos of the main crags, QR codes with GPS co-ordinates to reach the parking areas, GPS tracks for all the approaches, so that the paths hidden in the dense Finale woods can be found.

 

Marco “Thomas” Tomassini

 

(1971), started going to Finale in the Eighties. His passion for mountains and rock brought him first to caving and then climbing. Within a short time he also started bolting climbing routes particularly in the Finale area. Between 1993 and 1996 he became a potholing instructor with the Società Speleologica Italiana and then a sport climbing instructor with the UISP and also an assistant instructor with the Club Alpino Italiano. Finale and its many crags became his area of choice for climbing and bolting. Here, in the last twenty-seven years, he has equipped, by himself and together with others, more than 600 routes of different length and grade.

 

In July 2007 he published his first guidebook to Finale entitled Finale by Thomas, which was a collection of the work that he had done over the previous two years bolting and re-bolting, photos, topos and text. In 2009, together with a group of friends, he founded the Association Tothemass. He continued tirelessly to bolt routes and in 2010, with a contribution from the Finale Ligure Town Council, and with his friend Jack, he redeveloped and created new sectors.