Where is via Steger

We are here in the Dolomites to climb multi-pitch trad routes, not something we do a lot of in the Bluies.  We agreed way back when thinking about this trip, we start modest and then build to bigger and harder.  We pick the first route – via Steger.  This route is the foundation stone of the whole trip.  We can’t plan beyond it.  We need to understand the grades, know where we stand, what we are good for.  We need to start getting our timings sorted: how fast can we climb this stuff, how many pitches can we do in a day.

{The routes here use either and sometimes both the UIAA and French grades: typically UIAA for the trad and French for the sport.}

Via Steger is the route that gets us started.  6 pitches and then a scramble to the summit on the 1st Sella tower: hardest pitch grade IV+ (about grade 12 in Aus).  With an easy descent involving only one 20m abseil.  As Warwick said a month ago
“If we can’t get up Steger we might as well go home!”

Before we flew out we were climbing each weekend at the Villawood gym because the weather was too bad to climb in the mountains.  And we would meet in the coffee shop next to gym beforehand and run through the routes we had come across in our research for this trip.  Warwick sent off a suggested hit list, then Scott & I read about the routes.  Via Steger was often the topic of our conversation.  Funny thing though, Steger, being a person after whom the route is named, has put up more than one route in these parts.  So at one point in one of these conversations we were talking about the Steger route and how good it would be to do it …  but, BUT, we were each talking about THREE different routes.  Oh dear!

Anyway, the forecast is for rain today, mainly in the afternoon, so doing a route that should only take the three of us about a half day makes sense.  We don’t go for a super early start as we want to have a chance to assess the weather before getting on it.

We meet at 7 at the hotel the boys are staying at.  Although breakfast has not yet been served, the slightly later start means that some food is available for them, and coffee.  Scott refills his cup for me and surreptitiously brings it out to the carpark.  Nice one.

7:30 we are at Sella Pass and walking up the hill.  Slight deviation onto the wrong path and then correct it and keep walking.  There is a small outcrop before the 1st (of 3) Sella Towers, head left of it, drop down a bit and ooooh, we see up close the face of the tower.  For some reason I need to go to the loo.  So I kinda shout out, ‘I’m just gonna stop here a minute’, and then look around, and the other 2 are already at it.  Yep, the need for a nervous little pee was universal upon spying the big walls.

The route, from looking at the photos in the guide, appears to start up a ramp on the first tower near where it meets the second tower.  But with the angle of the rock, and the steep scree slope we are walking across, it is difficult to get a good look into the gully and actually confirm rock matches the photo.  But this is where it must be. There is only one Sella Tower, the Steger route runs up the left hand side. We are at the Sella tower, on the left hand side.

But nothing quite matches the description or the photograph.  We ask ourselves, ‘are we sure we are on the 1st tower’.  ‘Yes’.  We scramble further up the gully up a diabolical scree slope – at one point I am walking up the slope with my hands on the rock semi climbing.

We go right up the gully to where it is closed to us by a big chockstone.  And there I spy a piton with a bit of tatt (climbing webbing) hanging off it.  This is it!  Much relieved we start gearing up.  But we are still not quite convinced.  The first pitch is a grade III+ (Aus 9) ramble.  Warwick leads up – it has 3 pitons in two meters in a short sharp overhanging crack ….which was quite awkward to climb.

Scott seconds and then I go up.  I lead the next pitch – in the guide it is a grade I gently rising ledge, basically almost walking.  No pitons for me, I start placing wires.  The rock I am climbing on is crap: very friable (breakable) and the ledge is full of loose stones that clatter of the walls below when I dislodge them.  This is not pleasant.  We simply cannot believe that a pitch on one of the most popular beginner routes in the Dolomites would have this much loose stuff on it.

The pitch is meant to traverse to the 2nd chimney at 25m and then belay, with the 3rd pitch going up the chimney.  I belay at the 2nd …

‘well is it a chimney’,

‘not really, more an open book corner, but I’ve done 25m’.

I bring the boys up to my belay and we all agree this cannot be the route.  A retreat is in order.  Warwick first, then Scott reverses the pitch I have just led.  I go last, on a descending traverse, which means I am effectively leading it.  For Warwick & Scott the rope goes above and to the side of the them so if they fall it will be a bad fall, but not too bad.  If I fall, with the rope going down and to the side of me, I plummet and then swing.  And in 25m there were 2 bits of gear.

Off I go, nervously, and slowly, I make my way down until I am about 4m from the belay, with the hardest move on really loose rock still to do.  And I am gripped.  Badly wobbling from the grip I ever so carefully move across to the belay.  Meanwhile, Warwick had soloed up the loose scree gully above the chockstone and confirmed it was not our route.  We ab off the belay.

AND THEN, we spot some tatt on the face across from us.  And then it starts to make sense.  If we had belayed from the bottom of the gully, and climbed the rock not the scree, then it would put us on a traverse line.  About 25min across the traverse line was the tatt, just before a chimney.

There is no motivation to get back on the route: our day is done.  We started climbing at 8:30, it is now 10:30, time to move onto something else.  It is good to know we have now found the route and we will come back to it another day.

Walking out, still not completely convinced we did find the route, Warwick wants to find some of the other climbs to get our bearings.  When doing so, a British couple is climbing up the scree below us, so S & I drop down to talk to them.  Yes, they were the people we saw yesterday on the Tofana (it looked incredible).  The route they did is only 6a, and a sports route, but many of the pitches were 50m, with only 5 bolts per pitch “if you could find them”.  Wow!  They are working up to the Comici route on the North face of Cima Grande.  (mentally, take a step back and bow – and whats more, they are old, like grey hair old).

They are aiming to do the route that Warwick was looking for to get our bearings.  All of them agree on where it must be, and we wander off.  On the way back we walk around the little outcrop we passed to look onto another face.  We can see several groups on different climbs, including one group of 3 on what looks like a beginners route.

Scott – ‘could that be the Steger route’?

Warwick & I in harmony ‘no’.

Scott – ‘oh well, it just looked a bit like the route we were looking for’.

The group of three were having an epic.  He was belaying two at the same time, none of them could hear each other.  We turned and left them to their misery.

We sat at the café at the Sella pass and cried into our coffee.  Perfect climbing weather, all the real climbers out on the rock doing it, and here’s us, sitting in the café.  I am not even going to describe how it felt.  I mean, there is close to 100 years of climbing experience between us, and we could not find a route listed in every ‘top 5’ or ‘top 10’ multi-pitch Dolomites lists.

Spurred on by Warwick, we decide to head to a small sports crag near La Villa.  With La Villa being at the opposite side of the Sella group to the Sella Pass it makes no difference which way we take, so I head towards the Pordoi pass as we hadn’t yet been that way.

Not more than 5 minutes down the hill and Warwick starts screaming:

‘THAT’S IT, THAT’S the STEGER’.  I mean screaming!!!

I pull over, we get out, and sure enough, the route that Scott had (tentatively) suggested could be it, was indeed it.  From down here, it was all so obvious.

The Sella Tower, it’s a tower, it has, simplisticly, FOUR sides.  We of course, only thought to look on one side.  As S said ‘we tried to bend reality to fit our will, and failed’.  Much discussion through the remaining day on why not one of us challenged the underpinning assumption for all of the decisions we had made – we were simply on the wrong side of the tower.  Now, before you be too harsh, it took almost 30min to walk from one side to the other, half of that on very unstable scree.

But what did that say about the other climbers we bumped into.  I mean, they seemed to know what they were doing – but they too were on completely the WRONG face.  Love to know how the day turned out for them.

We head to the sports cliff and get spanked by a few short routes.  Then head back to Colfosco to walk into a multi pitch sports route near town that is on the list.  We walk to the cliff no issues – but spend at least 15-20minutes looking along 20m of the base of the cliff for the climb, and eventually find it.  I mean, you can sit in a restaurant in town and see the line of this climb, but at the base of the cliff you can’t quite see where it actually starts.

We knew when we were planning this trip that we would have days like this.  But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with it.

I then have possibly the worst meal I’ve ever had in Europe.

Tomorrow can only get better.