Cogne ice climbing - Cascade de Lillaz, by Ian Wyatt

How far do you have to walk to get to your nearest park? Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen? An hour? Imagine that you live within sight of a park: a couple of minutes’ walk brings you into the park, you walk across it in five and another ten minutes through the woods brings you to a beautiful waterfall in its own picturesque canyon, complete with strategically placed steps and viewing areas. Take this walk in winter and you have just approached the lovely Cascade de Lillaz in the Val de Cogne, Italy.

If you, or someone you know, has been ice climbing in Cogne then the chances are you know someone that has done the Cascade de Lillaz. This hugely enjoyable route is justifiably popular, not least because of its easy access. The most surprising feature of this classic of Italian ice is that its first ascent wasn't recorded until January 1981, by Aldo Cambiolo and Pierluigi Sartre. Compare that to 1969 for the low lying and rare to come into condition The Grey Mare’s Tail (IV) in the Moffat Hills, which is also only a fifteen minute walk in and great fun if you are lucky enough to catch it.

Often mentioned in the same breath as Norway’s Rjukan, when considering a winter ice hit, Cogne is a popular destination for all abilities as it has a high concentration of pretty and reliable icefalls across a wide grade range. The climbing is actually centred around the village of Lillaz about 5km further up the valley, which is so climber friendly that you can park for free (only in the winter) and they even have signs to guide you to the main climbs around the village. Yes, that’s right signposts to the tick-list icefalls, short of offering to carry your sack how much easier can it be?

The final pitch follows an obvious ramp above a pool. The most worrying part of this pitch is the initial steepening to get up onto the ramp, although only about 70° it is right above the pool and maybe it’s just me but I found the sight and sound of the water falling into the pool quite distracting. Once on the ramp the angle eases considerably and the line is a slight left to right rising traverse, of course the trick is to not be directly beneath the party above. There is a choice of belays at the top, one set well back or a semi-hanging belay at the top of the ramp from which you have a good view of everyone coming up. A fine spot for a belay, that is until you drop your belay device, remember the pool? Well, it might be worth a summer swim for someone because I’ll bet there’s more than my Reverso in there.  Walk up and right from the last pitch keeping an eye open for an abseil bolt slightly below the track as you look out. And if you are not a butter fingered numpty like me you won’t have to use an Italian hitch to ab’ off. Good job there’s a climbing shop in Cogne.

We managed to climb every day during our week in February, though some of our planned adventures were somewhat curtailed by a couple of days of pretty heavy snowfall. There had been quite a lot of snow the night before our last day and so we sought a non-avalanche prone route that would offer an early finish. So going to check out the right hand start to the Cascade de Lillaz was an obvious choice. The short walk through large, thick, Hollywood snowflakes brought us to a well formed icefall surrounded by soft fresh snow. With hardly anyone else around and in that special silence that snow fall brings it felt wonderfully atmospheric. An easy broad cone leads up onto a cauliflower ice section, all trending leftwards to a short step building up to the finale, a steep section of five meters or so to finish. There is a bolt here so you can escape if you’re not happy with the condition of the final few metres.  There was a hole under the crux of about four or five feet in height with water thundering behind it and out of it, all of which added to the sense of excitement; it was Dave’s lead so I could just enjoy the sight, feel and sound of the waterfall trying to break out of this section, but the ice around it was very good. For the last few metres it all becomes much steeper and life feels a bit harder but before you know it you are at the belay. As we had already done the rest of the route we abseiled off and had a play on the ice around the bottom of the route before retiring for coffee and cake.

The ice routes at the Cascade de Lillaz are described in the Cogne Selected Ice Climbs guidebook. This modern guidebook (published in December 2019) describes 400 of the best ice climbs around the valleys of Cogne, Urtier, Grauson, Lillaz, Valeille, Valnontey, Valsavarenche and Valle di Rhemes.  Buy the Cogne Selected Ice Climbs guidebook from our shop.