Adrian Paută is a founding member of the CASSIO Montana club, a climber with expeditions and climbs on 4 different continents. On the occasion of the inauguration of the redevelopment of the Sun's Gate route, he was willing to tell us a little about the experience of the 1970s that he had while climbing in Vadu Crișului.



The year of my first climbing experience in Vadu Crișului

I arrived in Vad in 1977. As a climber, I started in 1972 in the Bicaz Gorges, as a student in Iași.
In Vad, I joined Szabo Bela's Rapid Club. The first route was Crucea Dreaptă made with Kinay (Chinese). And I took them all in a row (there weren't many back then).

The historical reality of the techniques and equipment used

In those days, we didn't have harnesses yet. There were a vest here and there, but we alsoused to tie directly to the rope. The belaying was mostly done over the back. But I preferred belaying in a munter hitch using the piton. Just like today, by the way, when there are harnesses.

The holy piton at the base of the route

Thus, on the routes I climbed, I looked for a piton to belay at the base. Sometimes I happened to find a solid tree right near the entrance of the route and it was more convenient to hammer the piton into the tree. For example, I had one at the base of Paradise Lost and Anonimus. But in the meantime the trees have disappeared for reasons of alpine landscape aesthetics. :P
However, the tree at the entrance to the Inca climbing route remained. There you can still see the piton almost swallowed by the old bark. Surprisingly there was another piton that survived over the years.

The piton at the base of the Sun's Gate route

Painfully digging through my consolidated sclerosis, I also remembered the route in Terase that had a tree at its base. What I found at its base can be seen in the picture.


Sun's Gate revived after over 50 years

Recently, the route was revived on a avalable new linew. The reason? In the meantime, other generations of climbers have wandered through Vad. The problem? The sacred alpine ethics that say you don't intervene, don't vandalize the routes of your predecessors, or don't block a wall of several rope lengths with a short climbing route, or don't intersect another climbing/mountaineering route didn't really stick with some people from those generations. So we decided in these three years to make every effort not to disturb other invasive artworks in the area.

The reality behind the new Sun Gate route

The old entrence was full of vegetation so we entered a few meters to the left, on the clean rock. The route, in the upper part, with the cliff blocked by new developments, was deviated far to the left. And I named it, in memory of the old route, the Sun's Gate, because it seemed to sound more poetic than the Girls'.