NIVA * MELLOBLOCCO | THE APP

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One of the major novelties of the 2024 edition of Melloblocco is the use of the NIVA app, which will play a useful and innovative role in supporting organizers and participants.

The first advantage will be that boulderers will be able to use the interactive and geolocalised maps of the Historical Paths directly in the app. This will not only make it easy to find one’s way around the valley by discovering all the boulders but also to delve into their history directly with a click on the map: thanks to information and photos, one will discover the characters and dates that made them memorable.This information is easily accessible from the home of the NIVA app, where users have also the chance to join the event chat to get updates in real-time, or discover more about the festival and the NIVA project.

The second feature with which NIVA will support the Festival is allowing all participants to log the problems climbed and see them in a list easily from their mobile phones. This will allow climbers to know in real-time how many other boulderers have climbed each problem and will make it easier for the organizers to manage this process: thanks to NIVA, the classic manual self-certification methods will be eliminated, and participants will be more involved. As is inherent in the event’s spirit, however, it will not be a matter of defining rankings and winners (in fact, no value will be assigned to the boulders) but only of having a report on the boulderers who put themselves to the test. This also means that each participant’s user account will forever keep track of the problems completed in each edition, thus giving them the opportunity to challenge each other to improve from year to year.

The third but not least opportunity is that NIVA will enable connections between all the people involved in the festival and will do so in several ways. On the one hand, it will be possible to see the boulderers present at the festival and find new fellows to explore the valley and the historic boulders together. On the other hand, it will facilitate communication through a group chat(in addition to the one-to-ones) in which all members will be able to interact and comment in real-time, report needs of all sorts and search for others. Finally, it will also give the organizers the opportunity to communicate more easily and directly with participants, alerting them in real-time through special notifications of the start of a certain activity or providing service information for the optimal running of the Festival.

Within NIVA it will also be possible to view the three historical paths selected for the festival. Each path is composed of 10 boulders, to discover Val di Mello and Val Masino. A true exploration of the bouldering history’s symbolic boulders through the beauty of nature and the art of climbing, that will ring the valleys in a small DOC journey made for climbing but also for ‘contemplation’.

The three paths are developed on 3 levels of difficulty (5-6A, 6B-6C, 7A-7B), each of which responds to the ability of the individual climber: from the path for the less performing, to that for the almost champions, without neglecting that for the very champions (there are 10 prize blocks per category!).

Here they are summarised below:

1. I SASSISTI (5-6A): named after the historic first climbers of the Valley’s boulders, who have been active since the 1970s, and re-proposes their first achievements. How can one not marvel at the beauty of the passages, daring and revolutionary for the time, on boulders such as the Yeti Tendine, the Preda Peintada or the Masso della Luna?

2. THE MELÀT (6B-6C): the ancient inhabitant of Val di Mello who forged the megalithic steps, testimony to how much strength and tenacity he had to reach the most remote and inaccessible pastures. A good dose of strength and endurance will be needed to collect the ten passages of the path, which includes authentic gems such as the Francese or the Sass de la Polenta.

3. IL GIGIÀT (7A-7B): the most difficult path could not fail to be dedicated to the Gigiàt: a monstrous, legendary, and gigantic being, a cross between a goat and an ibex with very long hair, which legend has it inhabiting the woods and the Val Masino’s crags. Few can claim to have spotted it! Completing this path and closing some of the emblematic passages of granite climbing, such as Tarzan, Vermut Stisciut, and the Spigolo della Carrozza di Rame,is equivalent to being a ‘Master of Stone’.