Irina Morozova, member of DAV, the director of the Festival “Dolomites Women”, speaks about the National Mountaineering Women’s Festival in Italian Alps.

From the 11th  till the  25th of June, in Italian Alps, in the region of Tre Cime di Lavaredo took place the open women meeting – National Mountaineering Festival «Dolomites Women». The meeting gathered 20 young women from Russia and Belorussia.
The organizers of the «Dolomites Women» were the Demchenko`s Central Russian mountaineering club and Russian section of DAV in Munich – DAV Club Russland. The festival was held with the support of the Russian Mountaineering Federation. The partners of the festival were Salewa and RedFox.

The organizers and the jury were the leading Russian mountaineers: Yuri Koshelenko, the holder of the “Piolet d`or” for the pioneer ascent in 2003 together with Valery Babanov to the Nuptse East; Sergey Efimov, the participant of the first Russian expedition to Everest in 1982; Oleg Hvostenko, the strongest mountaineer from Krasnoyarsk; Elena Kuznezova – the  senior trainer of the Demchenko`s Central Army Club, the secretary and the chairwoman of the qualification commission of Federation of Mountaineering. And DAV representatives: Igor Ivashura, president of DAV Club Russland and Vladimir Molodojen. One of the honorable guests of «Dolomites Women» was Christopher Heinz.


One of the main goals of the festival was to develop the feminine style of mountaineering, which by the opinion of the organizers of «Dolomites Women» is typical for the women’s teams and rope parties.

The Festival started with traditional Russian mountaineering competitions, so called «School», which take place on the multi pitch itinerary (3-4 pitches) marked by the organizers  with traditional rock climbing.

In the «School» competition a new radical system of judging was used. The base of this system corresponds with the base of figure skating judging, which means that judges estimate not only the speed of the itinerary passage, as in all international climbing competitions and in Russian championships of mountaineering but also the technique and the style of the team. The expert jury in person of Yuri Koshelenko, Sergey Efimov, Oleg Hvostenko, Elena Kuznezova, Irina Morozova, put down the marks for the technique and style. In the end the marks were put together and the winners were announced by the biggest sum of the results.

The marks for the technique represented the sum of the marks for technique of climbing, belaying and work with the equipment. The style mark consisted of main features, such as, e.g. passing by free climbing without using the rest point on aid, and supplementary features as elegancy, lightness, feminity of movements on the mountain and harmony and technique of cooperation of the rope partners.



The next event of the «Dolomites Women» meeting which followed the School was the master class, in which all the comers could take part to demonstrate his own technique and style.


After the finish of the opening events, the central stage of the meeting «Dolomites Women»- the ascent to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo has began.
The participants had an opportunity to make any number of ascents on any peak of Tre Cime during 9 days – Сima Grande (2998 m), Cima Ovest (2973 m) and Cima Piссola (2857 m) or the Eastern fortresses of the mountain rage Lavaredo – Torre Preus (2700 m) and Punta di Frida (2792 m).

After the end of the festival the jury summed up the results of the 2 best ascents of each woman’s team. Here another method of judging was used: the scores for each ascent were put up according to the rating of the itinerary, the speed and the coefficient of style.


In the main nomination of «Dolomites Women» the victory was hold by the team Alpindonna, Irina Morozova, member of DAV the Demchenko`s Central Army Club, and Catherina Matiushevskaya, member of combined team of Krasnoyarsk of  mountaineering, one of the strongest Russian combined teams.
The second and the third place were occupied by Belorussian teams Minsk Onsite (Julia Dolgova and Kate Tutubalina) and Minsk-1 (Antonina Malama and Svetlana Dubovik).

The central nomination of the festival Dolomites Women was Miss Dolomites prize – for the most feminine, graceful, technical woman mountaineer. The prize according to the results of voting was awarded to Ekaterina Matiushevskaya. However the main prize of the festival Dolomites Women – matreshka – mountaineer, which was supposed to be handed to the Miss Dolomites, was presented to the city administration of the valley Auronzo, where this unique event of the Dolomites history – the Russian Women’s mountaineering festival- took place. This valley has a rich history in Alps and in the development of world’s mountaineering, that’s why we considered an honor that the symbol of the Festival Dolomites Women – matreshka – mountaineer, designed by the painter Natalia Likonova, will stay in the museum Auronzo, and our Festival will go down in history and will stay in memory forever.





Irina Morozova, director of the l «Dolomites Women»,
July 2009


PARTNER OF THE FESTIVAL