Fun and games in the dolomites

The Dolomites. The name brings sweaty palms to all those have ever dabbled in rock climbing. As we drove through Milan a blessed relief. After a couple of weeks of epic paddling it also felt like it would be nice to do something else for a change.

Driving though the Dolomites is probably the closest to the mountains a couch potato can get just sitting in the car. The roads are very slow going as they wind up their way up and down the mountains and the views are terrific. You find yourself straight across the to the imposing rock wall on the other side and it feels so close you can almost touch it.

I guess this is why so many people choose to come here cycling. Because despite the incredibly steep roads, where ever you go in the dolomites there are people cycling . One day we got caught up in a road cycle race. It included a 5km climb up to a path, for which our van didn’t get out of second gear the whole way. Impressive!

Of course, for us it wasn’t enough to just look from a distance. We needed to walk up the mountains, to touch the rock and to climb. After trawling through the volumes of the guide book we found our climb, the East Face Direct Route, on Catinaccio Central
Summit 2981m. It was a bit longer than we had planned to do, and a bit harder too but once we saw it, it was too late – we decided to give it a go anyway.

The next night after a long day we were still on the mountain, sheltering under a blanket of packaging foam listening to the lightening war above us. We had simply climbed too slowly and had lost the route mid way. After a week of bolted climbing in France we had been surprised how poorly marked the route was, and found our description was quite minimalist. In Summer, we would have been surrounded by many other teams on such a classic as this, but in late May we were very much alone as the thunder boomed around us.

The morning slowly dawned and after a time unfroze our bodies. Then when we started to look at the line of pitons we were following, we realised we were still off route. Dehydrated, and tired and lost, we decided to head down.

Five abseils of rock bulges, twenty abseils off pitons and two abseils off particularly bendy pitons later we finally made it to the solid ground again. We had spent 36 hours in our harnesses, survived two thunderstorms, been pelted by hail stones, lost several slings, one carabiner and one ATC, but we had made it down again.

There’s nothing like that feel alive feeling…