Day 8 (Thursday)Since yesterday failed to invalidate our travel insurance, today would have to suffice.
Sally had been talking for months about climbing some via feratta. These are climbs in the Dolomites that are protected with fixed steel wire bolted into the rock faces. Many were put in place during WWI when the Italians spent almost the entire war fighting the Austrians in these brutal mountains - predictably no-one could get ahead, but the result was a set of excellent climbs put in place to help the troops negotiate the mountains.
Sally bought a book on these and I purchased the appropriate equipment. As well as a normal climbing harness and helmet you need a special type of belay device consisting of two caribiners secured by en elasticated strap to your harness via a tear-away deceleration device - the stitching of which progressively fails to decelerate you if you fall. The steel wire doesn't give, so the via feratta equipment has to for you.
I chose an easy via feratta. Though I wasn't prepared for the fact that the hike on the approach and various unprotected bits were far more serious than the actual via feratta itself. We dediced to climb the middle peak below:
Again, there was supposed to be a chair lift running up to the start of the climb, but that was also closed until later in the month, so we had to hike up the slope, much of it loose scree. At the top was a shaded area with a 45 degree snow slope we had to traverse before reaching the start of the protected climb. Annoyingly, to keep our kit light I had left the ice spikes and the trekking poles in the truck. Our footwear, fine for the rock faces, was useless in the sloping snow, and I found the only safe way we could traverse was to attempt to dig foot holds and, having chosen a suitably sharp stone-age style rock hand axe, use that to gain a handhold in the snow.
Once past the snow we clipped into the steel wire:
It took a short while to get into the rhythm of clipping and unclipping, and guiding the caribiners along the wire past rocky outcrops, but we soon had the knack. There were a couple of sections that were thus protected, then other bits in between that were not, but were safer. I hadn't studied the climb in any detail before hand so didn't know what to expect, so was elated as the view opened up around us as we ascended the final tens of feet up to the extreme peak of the mountain:
We had the traditional cup of tea from Sally's flask before starting the descent - I could see clouds gathering and this was not a location I wanted to be in when the heavens opened.
Soon we were struggling across the snow and down the scree slopes, trying to prevent Sally from twisting her ankle again. I was slightly less concerned now since we had done the big thing that Sally really wanted to do and would have been very disappointed if injury had prevented. So we returned to the camper, backed it into a location with a nice view and as rain drops began to fall I enjoyed some Italian bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar (Sally didn't since she couldn't touch it due to her wheat allergy).
I decided to take a different route back around the mountain. The other side was a more major pass and with a big cable car running up to a high restaurant was very popular with coach parties.
We rode up the cable car and had a hot chocolate at the top:
Then went for a walk on the snow - again I hadn't bothered taking the ice spikes - doh! I waved at Sally NOT to take the straight line route towards me from here - air isn't a great structural support:
Up on the top among the tourists a few people stood out. Sally got talking to another couple with climbing gear who were about to go off climbing. I spotted a couple of Chinese guys having a great time - they had serious mountaineering gear on (crampons, ice axes, etc.) and were having a real laugh trying this out and taking photos and video of each other. I suspected they were going to be joining some mountaineering team and were trying out the brand new equipment somewhere easy first. They chatted to passers by and fluently switched between English and Italian.
A thunder storm rolled in and we retreated back to the restaurant and took the next cable car down.
Stay tuned for wetter action...
Steve.
