Rzenik is a small mountain in the Slovenian Alps with a 400m high north face that is one of the steepest in Slovenia. Most of the routes on it were done in the 80ʼs. These days it is rarely climbed and standing underneath it, it's easy to understand why: constant rockfall makes this face really alive.

Two years ago I tried Hell's Cedevita in autumn with Rok Blagus. We were unable to free climb because of wet rock; the same day the idea of climbing it in winter was born.

This year, with Luka Stražar as my partner, I returned once more to Hell's Cedevita. Our first attempt at the overhanging pitches was in January. No luck. We returned in February, made a bivy in a big cave at the base of the wall and spent the night thinking about the overhanging terrain.

The first pitch is the most difficult. Our plan was to warm up first and then climb the route. But with a fluid start I got to the crux unpumped and decided to go for it. Luka followed -same thing. Cool! The crux pitch for breakfast.

We made it easily to the first ledge. The following pitches looked scary, with big fresh rockfall, which made us adjust toward a central pillar line where we found some interesting frozen turf. The day ended 4 pitches below the top, a bivy and we topped out the next morning.

It's a challenge to capture ascents like this in bare numbers. We had a great time! We found steep drytooling on loose rock, with the hardest pitch around M9 and funny but serious climbing on frozen turf.

Luka Lindič