European Vacation Part 5

This is the part of the trip where things got really exciting for me. I was headed into the Alps, to commune with nature, enjoy the scenery and climb some really big mountains! First stop was a town called Rovereto. There's a small village just south of town called Mori which has a mid-grade difficulty via ferrata that goes up the cliff from town. Via ferrata means "iron road" or "iron way" in Italian and is a climbing method very exclusive to the Alps. Basically, instead of carrying a rope and either traditional climbing protection or even quick draws, all you need is a climbing harness and a Y-shock absorber thingy. This Y attaches to fixed steel cables that run up the cliff. Also, any section of climbing harder than about 5.4 has metal spikes anchored into the rock to grab or stand on. Its not exactly low impact and its not exactly difficult either compared with free climbing, but it does take some guts. Whereas in free climbing you can't exceed a factor 2 fall, here 5 is the approximate max. So the rule is: don't fall. The Y-shock absorber will help to reduce the acceleration in the event of a fall, but its not magic and some very big, pretty devastating falls are possible.

Since neither Eric or I had done a via ferrata before, we didn't want to start with something ridiculously hard or very exposed in case we couldn't handle it. So we started with via ferrata Monte Albano. There was another group of Italian climbers that started just before us, but we soon overtook them when one of their members couldn't get over a section. From there on, we cruised. It takes more raw arm strength than regular climbing, but much less technical ability.












We reach the top of the cliff right around noon and started hiking for the actual summit of the mountain which was still almost 1000 meters above.











Summit achieved, we hiked along the ridge and then down through village after village covered with wine grapes in between, all the way back to our hotel.





We were feeling pretty confident about our abilities to climb via ferrata, so we decided to up the ante and head into the Dolomites. The ferratas here weren't that much more difficult than Monte Albano, but these were in high alpine areas where a mistake carried much greater consequences. We took a series of trains and buses to Cortina d'Ampezzo, where we hopped one last bus to a trailhead near a high pass. We had to beg/bribe the driver to let us off at the trailhead instead of a real village, but it worked. The night before I had called the closest hut to the trailhead and asked for beds for two. They said they were filled and directed me to another hut that I wasn't able to reach by phone. So we headed for the first hut in hopes that they would have 2 beds free.



Sure enough, they really didn't have any free beds. It was already late afternoon by this point and we didn't have sleeping bags or any real shelter, so we took a gamble and headed to the next hut in hopes of finding respite there. Rifugio Giussani was an hour's hike away, but practically straight up and we figured less people would make the trek all the way up there. Luckily, we were right and we had a place to sleep and food in our bellies to prepare us for the next day.



The weather forecast for July 8 called for morning sun, with rain occurring sometime in the afternoon. We were going to attempt a series of via ferratas that lead up a narrow ridge, over a series of smaller summits and eventually onto Tofana di Mezzo (3244 m). To reach the beginning of the route, we actually had to descend from the hut then traverse around the corner of the ridge to reach the ferrata. We left the hut at just after 6am in the clouds, but the sun soon poked out and we were in clouds and sun for most of the day. Along the traverse we saw a herd of ibex who clearly put our scrambling skills to shame.







The climbing was very similar to what we had experience 2 days before on Monte Albano, but the scenery was completely different. Everyone around us were pillars of rock erupting from green valleys, all swimming in clouds. We achieved the main ridge and first minor summit, Punta Anna, and the climbing became very easy, often unprotected, but very exciting.





After a couple of navigational faux pas, we neared the next summit, which had to be approached by an unprotected ladder. No matter how many times I've climbed a ladder before, nothing scared the crap out of me like this one.



After the ladder, we went into a shallow, but very narrow col connected to Torre Aglio (Aglio Tower). On Torre Aglio, there are two options. Either traverse around it or go up it. The thing that we weren't so sure about at this point was what happens if you go up it. It turned out, that the only route of descent is the same as the ascent and simply leads back to the traverse. So we got to the top via the most difficult section we had done yet.





By this time cumulus clouds were starting to billow. Not above us really, but next to us. The summit of Tofana di Mezzo was obscured by clouds and we were not sure how much longer it would take to achieve it, so we called a retreat. It was only 12:30pm, but the threat of being caught in such an exposed area in a thunderstorm was terrifying. We descended a difficult section of ferrata from the tower and followed the traverse into the Bus de Tofana, which is actually a col that has a hole under it, forming a natural bridge. We walked over the bridge and then continued to climb down into and through the hole and onto an enormous scree field that would take us back toward the hut.







We arrived back at Rifugio Giussani around 2pm in bright sunshine. Being Sunday afternoon, the deck outside was packed with hikers and climbers, so we chilled out there, ate and got tans. Despite the good weather at this point, Eric and I both agreed that we had made the right decision to escape to lower ground rather than push our luck. Sure enough, 4 hours later the storm finally materialized and our fears were proved correct, albeit a bit premature. It poured all night.



The next morning the rain subsided to a light drizzle, but everything was much too wet to climb, so we hiked back to the road. Rather than going straight down the way we had come up, we took a roundabout way through two other valleys toward a pass where we knew we could hail a bus. The day another mixture of sun with veils of clouds hanging around all the peaks.