Sterling Adventures Blog » Dolomite Update

Jul 10

Dolomite Update

Pending the impending kat-card, here’s quick update on our climbing activities so far in the Dolomites… We drove to the Dolomites via Arco on Sunday, to suss out a good weather default because of poor forecast for the Dolomites. But Monday didn’t dawn too badly so we set of for Cinque Torre, just to play safe.

Here you see Terry happy on a ledge…

The next day we did a route on this amazing tower, which is the on the cover of the Italian Dolomiti guide book….

And the next day, the rain drops come! But really it’s no big deal. The Cinque Torre are full of easy grade IIIs and IVs with big iron pegs everywhere, it is no big problem to get off in the wet!

‘Get a move on Bernie’ I say, it’s starting to rain!

But Tuesday, the weather stayed bad. We were back at the Cinque Torre. We were about the only people there.

Here you see Bernie on the Torre Lativa - it could equally be Bowfell or Ogwen!!!

There is an almost unlimited array of climbing to go at - like this big diedre today on which we ran out of time before the last cable car. Hopefully more on that later…

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Entry for Thursday, 10th July 2008 by Terry, filed under Rock Climbing. Location (Italy).
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Pete says:
Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 6:31 pm

Looks like you’re having a great time - wish I was there - we’ll have to give the Dollies another go (soon)!

Anna says:
Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

It looks great Terry, can I borrow your guide book some time?

Terry says:
Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 12:02 am

Yeah Anna, you may be able to buy my guide books on ebay next week, albeit a little wet, after today’s epic
We returned to the Boeseekofl first thing, to see the cable car disappearing into the cloud. Question was, was the climb in the cloud or above it
Well, discretion once again won and certainly saved our lives today.
We returned to Cortina thence Missurina for a relatively safe climb, low down and about an hour from the road - a big diedre on Monte Popena Basso.
However, a couple of pitches up, raindrops came and Bernie’s on a traverse out of the Diedre. Then the full blown storm started, hail, thunder and lightening. The whole climb became a waterfall fortunately we took the radios as a trial. I tell him to climb up to the next stance and I’ll join him for rappel. But , there are no anchors. By this time the water from the Deidre is running down my neck and my ledge is covered in hail. Bernie threads a manky chockstone with the yellow rope and downclimbs as I take in on red. A hairy feat, since all the holds and ledges are covered in hail. It took ages and we were freezing and soaked.
But he made it back ok and we rappelled safely to the ground, soaked to the skin!
But imagine if we’d have been 6 pitches up the Boeseekofln, with a complex descent, had we even made it up.
Needles to say, much chocolate cake and beer followed.