clovehitched | Photo Post - Long Weekend in the Dolomites

So Sylvia, Zoe and I just got back, enduring the awfulness of Ryanair (never again - by the time we finished paying for extras there was basically no price difference between them and a full fare airline, and the experience was just deeply unpleasant - I now firmly believe that flying with them is false economy and too stressful to boot) from a few days in the Italian Alps, where we were after an introduction to the interesting and exciting looking sport of the via ferratas.

Via ferratas were originally routes put up to help alpine troops, many of whom were unwilling conscripts, fight in the front line in the WWI front between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. Much the same sort of stuff went on as in the western front in terms of trench warfare, but this was at 9,000 feet and they needed a way of getting troops to and from the front line. This tended to involve fixing ropes, ladders and bridges to the cliffs, as well as digging tunnels through the limestone. People died in their thousands, not just from enemy action, but from harsh conditions in the mountains, where they would freeze to death, fall to their doom, or perish in avalanches.

Today many of the original via ferratas are open as routes for summer tourists, bringing money to the economy of a very remote area which normally functions as a ski resort. Rickety WWI wooden ladders and ropes have been replaced with steel, and new routes have been developed. Still, using them is not for the faint hearted, and I can only imagine how utterly terrified some of the WWI conscripts must have been.

Anyway, we took some photographs. Here are a selection:

After a drive in our rental car (a little diesel - first time I have driven a diesel, and it was a manual, and this was on Alpine roads with steep gradients and constant hairpin bends - I felt like I was changing gear constantly, which I more or less was), we arrived in the town of Corvara. The werather was very rainy, and on our previous holiday in Utah this would have meant flash floods. Not so here though - the wooded slopes can absorb the water and many of the clouds were below us. However, we had to keep an eye out for thunderstorms. Via ferratas go to peaks, and do a good impression of being lightning conductors. Being on one in a thunderstorm is pretty suicidal.

A bit of a rest, some gear shopping and it was onto a cable car for our first, and very straightforward ferrata - VF Lagazuoi. This starts near the cable car station and takes you through some preserved WWI trenches before descending hundreds of metres inside the mountain in a network of tunnels built by the Italians to supply their trenches, and to try to undermine the Austrian positions and blow them off the side of the mountain with surprise high explosives. It's a big network, and without the signs inside them it would be easy to get lost in this 3D maze. I kept getting visions of Moria from the Lord of the Rings!

Occasionally there is a window to the outside, like this one. They were either built to dispose of rubble (and carefully disguised - if the enemy saw the portals they would train their artillery on them), or as artillery placements. Much of the route is pitch dark though, and a head torch is essential.

Eventually you drop out the bottom, and can wander round the base of the fortifications, which is still equipped as a via ferrata in places. Here is Zoe hanging on her VF kit.

The next day saw us heading up onto the Sella Massif to do VF Piz Da Lech. This involved a long ride on a gondola, starting from around 5,000 feet near our hotel, followed by the chairlift up to around 8,000 feet, where I still had 3G on my phone and was able to post to Twitter and Facebook!

Many of the chairlifts, gondalas and cable cars/aerial trams are kept running in the summer for hikers, ferraterists and other extreme sport participants...

...such as these guys. We hung around and watched them take off into the void. I know I have a habit of saying, "I will never do that", and then find myself doing it a few years later (like with canyoneering, climbing and via ferratas), but I really will never do this! It looks epically scary and dangerous.

A short hike took us to the start of the ferrata. You can just see the cable in the background. From here it's simple - clip yourself to the cable and follow it. You have a lanyard which has two carabiners, so that at least one is always clipped on. Having said that, much of the protection awarded by the cable is purely psychological...

...here are Sylvia and Zoe, on a section near the start. Every few metres the cable is attached to the rock with a peg. At each peg you are "safe" - it marks how far you can fall. The problem is that on these climbing pitches, a lot of the pegs are near ground level, rendering the protection rather moot. Although the climbs are made easier by the ubiquity of the cable, which you can haul yourself up with, you're basically free-solo aid climbing for much of the time. The consequences of a fall are the same - you hit the ground before your protection starts to deploy and break both your legs. Even if you only fall as far as an intermediate peg, the fall can be as high as factor 5 (the highest fall I've had in a climbing gym is about 0.7, and that shook me up). In these situations, the kit is designed to make the fall merely survivable, rather than safe.

You basically don't fall, ever.

Here's a group catching us up. A fall here would be nice and bouncy!

Some of the pegs are ... unusual! I'm not sure what this is all about!

Here's zoe near the top of a pitch. She has just clipped one of her 'biners to the peg, and is therefore safe, for the time being...

And here is Sylvia on a traverse section. Falls here are much less serious, because you won't slide down the wire. Could still hurt though.

Finally, after a disturbingly exposed section at the top of a long ladder, where you have to stick your butt right out into space (with the cloud tops hundreds of feet below you), we reached the top. On the aforementioned section Zoe briefly developed religion, and by the time she'd finished the move this had turned to polytheism because she decided one god was insufficient for how frightened she felt! Here she is on the peak in her triumph though. The way down is easier - there is a hiker trail that is considerably less death-defying.

The view from the top, over towards Piz Boe, was stunning, when we could see it between the clouds!

Here is Sylvia looking suitably grizzled near the top.

The next day we took the cable car up to Belvedere peak, to take on Via Ferrata Delle Trincee. This was the hardest one on our itinerary, and we ended up bailing on a steep section at the start. Nice view across to Marmolada and the Val Di Fassa though.

Here is the start of the ferrata, with some other ferratarists on it. I felt quite happy about doing this, but my enthusiasm was not shared by the other members of the group, who were uncomfortable with the level of climbing required...

...so we started to deploy "Plan B". I started up the ferrata, dragging my climbing rope behind me. About 15 metres in the air, I set up a hanging belay. I literally dangled from the cable and also set it up as the anchor for a top rope. The intention was to use it to provide extra security for the other two, and even haul them up if need-be. We did get as far as the actual hauling (this was an interesting experience while dangling from a steel cable half way up a cliff, but I am very pleased that I was able to rig the necessary ropework to do this, and safely), but there was less enthusiasm to continue this activity from below, and so I lowered my climber to the ground, re-rigged the rope for abseil, and used it to get down myself, retrieving all my gear as I went. We're hoping to give this one another go next year.

Our final day saw us with lots of time to kill before our night flight home, so we did a very short and exposed, but easier ferrata - VF Piz Da Cir. Despite being easier than Delle Trincee and Piz Da Lech, I was more scared here because of the exposure. Here are some others on one of the more exposed sections (it's a popular VF for groups).

And here is me, giving it a go. Nice cable, friend. Don't go anywhere now!

The top has this steel cross, and about room for ten people. To get down you have to reverse your steps for the last few metres of ferrata, which leads to awkward situations, so we abseiled off instead.

This guy was up here with a bunch of children on a rope. He was lowering them down from the summit using the rope, and at a first glance looked like he knew what he was doing. However, he was using two screwgate carabiners - one as an anchor and a second as a belay to lower each child. The screwgates were not done up, and when his anchor 'biner opened, and I pointed it out to him, he shrugged and said that it didn't matter! In addition he wasn't using a belay device or even a munter hitch on his other screwgate to provide a belay - he was just holding the weight of each of each child directly. He was, in my opinion, a muppet who is going to kill someone if he keeps behaving like that :-(

We got off the mountain and still had some time left, so took this bizarre ... contraption up to the foot of the Marmolada glacier. Marmolada is the highest peak in the dolomites, and at the foot of the glacier is a mountain refuge serving beer and hot food (I love how the Italians do this - even many via ferratas have pubs at the end, at 9,000 feet).

Nice view while you dine too! Similar air pressure to a long haul flight, but much better food!

Outside, after lunch, we wandered over towards the foot of the glacier, past some interesting cairns!

It wasn't long before we encountered the ice.

We hiked a little way up the glacier, not too far because it gets dangerous quite quickly, and constantly falling over in the snow on a steep slope loses its humour value quite quickly! We had a rest before sliding back down (sometimes on our feet, often on our butts!)

These guys had come down from the summit, doing proper glacier hiking. There are crevasses and stuff up there, apparently, and it's really steep and dangerous. We just played about on the terminal moraine, below the serious stuff.