Dolomites Epic
Friday was epic, and I think we can use with confidence the phrase “out there”.
Today will be our 6th day of climbing, without a break, all of it multi-pitch. We are physically and mentally worn out. The eagerness that fires you through the uncertainty of climbing, has dimmed. We are out to ‘make hay while the sun shines’: the forecast is for rain for a week, so we climb while we can, even if we, privately, would like to rest.
We started walking at about 7:40, started climbing at 8:45 and finally escaped to the top at 5:30, returning to the car at 6:50. Fitbit step count of 27,000.
That makes it about 10hrs of constant nervousness and at times agitation. For most of the time we really didn’t know if we could make it to the top, and after the first few hours, we didn’t think we could retreat. We were trapped by the climb. And if anyone asks me now what it is like to climb in the Dolomites – I don’t think I have an adequate answer.
The first pitch went up a smooth groove into a chimney topped by a chockstone. Above it a sling wrapped around a rock with a maillon on it. That was the last decent belay for a long time. The next pitch was an easy walk traverse to a corner with little pro to a dodgy belay. W yells out “don’t fall, it’s not a good belay”. I didn’t bother counting the number of times that was repeated throughout the day. And eventually we just gave up saying it, it was a given.
The next few pitches were easy scrambling, at one point almost hands off walking, but on the most dodgiest rock you can imagine. Nothing looks solid, every bit of non-vertical ground is covered in loose shale. Every foot & hand placement needs to carefully assessed and weighted. I finish a pitch, put a cam into a slot that I had to dig out a bit to fit the device in, one of the cams is fully open, and yell out “safe”. The knot in my gut tells me otherwise. The only reason Warwick needs a belay on this is in case he pulls a block off – which is highly probable.
And on it goes, getting steeper with each pitch, but the rock no better. We keep checking the guide, but it is useless. We are on a 50m wide ramp and we have no idea if we are on route or not. Coming across the occasional piece of fixed gear, sometimes old wires left in cracks, doesn’t confirm if we are on route, merely that others have been lost before us and have suffered through their own epic.
We are essentially new routing, not following a known path, but making it up as we go along. Warwick had developed a solid rule we had been following – just follow the path of least resistance. That might seem obvious, but equally obvious would be ‘take the best looking lines’, or ‘go where the pro(tection) is’.
At one point, I suggest retreat. I have the descent mapped out in my head, which belays we could use for abseils, which bits we would have to down climb. From here up, I would not want to abseil as I have no confidence of finding the points that would be safe to belay from. But descent from here is possible. We check the time, and the guide. 6 pitches to the top according to the guide, and based on our progress on other climbs, enough time. We would prove the guidebook wrong – both on number of pitches and their difficulty.
The climbing from here up is frequently old school brutality: cracks, corners, chimneys. Always steep, often loose, usually without much protection. At one point I join Warwick on a belay, and he greets me with “welcome to hell”. I back off a pitch and Warwick leads through. Not the last time on this climb I don’t take my lead. Warwick, and I, are now mainly sports climbers. But like all old sports climbers, he started with trad. And I see him climb in a fashion many who know him now would never have seen. (The next day, his right hand was swollen from the jamming he had done).
Often on the pitches, it takes longer to find gear to setup an anchor than it does to lead a pitch. We would pull onto a stance hoping for gear, and our hearts sink as there would be nothing to be found. The danger compounded by the typical approach of running it out on the last bit of the pitch once the stance had become visible, and with it the expectation of gear.
The guide said 14 pitches for 450m of climbing: we lost count, but it must have been closer to 20. Rope drag being a real issue on the wandering climb. Warwick leads what we expect will be the second last pitch, only to end in a tall smooth dark chimney. I lead up past him over a chockstone so we can get a view above, and quickly setup a belay – so Warwick can lead the next bit: which goes through a mix of thuggery & delicate stemming.
The last pitch, get this, went like this: crawl up into and through a cave, pull out onto a ledge with a face rising above to the left, and in front a short chimney with a chockstone. Warwick is screaming at me to climb the chockstone (as suggested by the guide) – ‘don’t go onto the face’, which looks inviting to me. I follow the call and pull over the chockstone, and as soon as I mount it I am faced with a gully full of scree, and am locked in place by rope drag. My only piece of protection – a single friend beneath the chockstone, with only two of four cams biting the rock.
Unable to move any higher, I am trapped, squatting on a small ledge above the entire climb, with no adequate protection to catch a fall. I yell at Warwick to start climbing, unbelayed, to the ledge past the cave to so he can free the rope: he tells me to just stay where I am. So I sit there, on a tiny ledge above the entire climb, with nothing but loose rubble above me, not secured to anything, while he climbs up to the point the rope drag eases. NOT HAVING FUN AT THIS POINT!
Finally I can move across to the other wall of the gully and frantically search for gear. I find something and bring Warwick up to my belay. Where he promptly just bursts out laughing – at the pointlessness of the anchor. I have the biggest nut we are carrying, wedged into a slot, but at least 2/3rds of the nut are outside the slot. Had Warwick fallen, and I attempted to arrest his fall, most probably it would have popped and the pair of us would have landed on the meadow below.
We take it in turns to scramble, belayed – in a sense, up the scree gully where we top out … onto a stance halfway up the gully. From where we climb un-roped to the top, which is a ridge line formed between the cliff we have climbed and the steep hill on the other side. It is so dramatically beautiful it is almost surreal, with tufts of mist hanging over parts of the surrounding summits and sitting in balls in parts of the valley below.
There is no time to gather our thoughts. Quickly we coil the ropes so they can be carried and then picking up a faint trail we head off. The walk down takes us 80 painful minutes. By the end, when we reach the grassy meadows above the car, I am walking down the hill backwards to ease the pain in my left foot.
Needless to say, we did not go home and have a shower before dinner, but drove straight to the restaurant we have eaten at all week and literately stagger in and slump into our familiar chairs. The waitress we have been joking with during the week just stops and stares at us.
‘we’re just back from climbing’, our explanation.
