The Lagazuoi Tunnels

The last via ferrata of my Italian trip was the easiest, but the beginning was almost as dramatic as the day before. Having decided not to take the cable car from Falzarego, we were coming to the end of what should have been an easy hike up to the top of the mountain where the via ferrata started when the voices of the gods roared, the heavens opened, and we were caught in a mighty thunderstorm. We were only about 20 minutes away from the refuge, but with the path turned into a small stream and rivulets of water streaking down the mountain, 20 minutes was plenty of time to get soaked.


It was perfect timing for the owners of the refuge, however, as we weren't the only ones that took advantage of it being lunch time to order a hot meal and dry out before making our way out across the ridge to where the via ferrata started.

It's hard to tell amongst the jagged stone of the Dolomites, but an enormous chunk of the mountain above Falzarego is missing, not because of natural erosion or disaster, but because during World War One, the Austrians were dominating the ridge from the top and the Italians were lurking lower down. Neither side was making much progress until the Italians, who had created a network of tun.nels in the mountain below, used explosives to blow away a giant section of the crest. The tunnels have now been turned into an outdoor museum and you can rent an audioguide and read information pannels as you make your way along the iron cable to the bottom.

The via ferrata was only a level 1 and we didn't use harnesses, but we were glad of our helmets, torches and fingerless gloves for holding on to the cables. Spending an hour inside a mountain in dank tunnels isn't exactly pleasant but it does give you some inkling of what life was like for the poor soldiers who carried not only all their provisions but tonnes of explosives and weaponry up the steep paths, then slept in the stone caves in inadequate clothes for the subzero winter temperatures. What is harder to understand, of course, is how these men were able to put up with such circumstances for so long, especially with the hindsight of knowing what a terrible waste the whole war turned out to be.

Via Ferrata Merlone

Monday was my second real day of via ferrata-ing and I made dramatic progress, from a scariness point of view if not a technical one. We decided to take on the Ferrata Merlone, a short, but very exposed climb in the Gruppo dei Cadini di Misurina.

We parked the car just beyond the Lago di Misurina and hiked up a trail through the forest, across a beautiful Alpine meadow filled with what seemed to be an amazing variety of flowers, given the dry desolation of the barren rocks that towered above it. From the Rifugio Fratelli Fonda-Savio it was a short walk up the Alta Via trail to the start of the via ferrata.

Iron Ladders

There is not much that requires particular skill about the Ferrata Merlone, but that can be hard to remember when you are several hundred vertical metres up a rock face, with nothing but stones, scree and thin air beneath you. Parts of the route are scrambly, but most of the climbing is actually done on iron ladders attached at a variety of angles to the mountain. I was able to avoid thinking too much about the exposure and the only part I found at all scary was what the guidebook described as an "airy traverse" - a few horizontal metres on a particularly vertical part of the cliff, with only a slippy and somewhat broken ladder for assistance.

Tre Cime di Lavaredo

We ate our sandwiches at the top and enjoyed the views across to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, but the clouds were drawing in and we soon decided it was time to head down. Unfortunately, a group of about 20 Czechs had decided to come up at that exact moment and they made their turnaround just as we arrived at the top of the cables. With the sky growing ever-darker, we started to make our painfully slow descent in the middle of their group, but after a couple of pitches the raindrops started to fall and, with all those people in front of us, we were going nowhere fast. To top it off, they were clipping 3 people at a time into each section of the cable (you should never have more than one person in each section, otherwise if one person falls they can knock the other off) and a few of them, with clumsy feet, were frequently kicking stones down the mountain, despite the fact that other members of the group below weren't even wearing helmets.

Nobody wants to be caught on the top of a mountain in a thunderstorm, but while being attached to an iron cable is about the worst thing you can do, sitting a couple of metres away from it is actually fairly safe, as the cable will act as a lightning conductor and draw the electricity away from you. We decided that the threat from the humans was worse than the natural dangers and stepped off to the side of the cable to sit and wait.

Luckily for us, although it rained a bit, the thunder and lightning never came and after about 20 minutes we were able to make our way down to the bottom safely. We had learned our lesson though: if you see large groups of people on a via ferrata, steer well clear!

Ferrata di Dibona

On Day 2 of my via ferrata experience, I decided to lower my sights a little and attempt a level 2 ferrata, the nevertheless dramatic-sounding Ferrata di Dibona. We took the Dolomitibus from Cortina to Rio Gere, then the ski-lifts carried us up the mountain to Rifugio G. Lorenzo. The first chairlift was hi-tech and high-speed, with a storm cover and padded seats, but the second was more like the mountain equivalent of a Regionale train, so the total trip took a little while (a lot less than it would have taken us to walk, though!). Up at the refuge, it was quite cold and the wind was blowing clouds around the mountain, but luckily not in the direction we were going.

Rifugio G. Lorenzo. On the left you can just see the longest
ferrata bridge in the Dolomites.

The via ferrata starts with some steep climbing, followed by the longest bridge in the Dolomites, which, compared to the scary wire bridge on my first via ferrata, (in St-Christophe-en-Oisans in France) was reassuringly disappointing, being very solid and firmly attached to both sides of the ravine it was crossing. We did the optional climb to the Cresta Bianca, which gave us a great view down to the refuge and the way we had come.

View of the ridge from the Cresta Bianca

The Ferrata di Dibona is essentially a fabulous, exposed ridge walk. It takes the whole day but most of the trail was not difficult at all, and definitely more like hiking than rock-climbing, although there were bits that would have been a bit scary if we hadn't been clipped in to the cable. You can either come down part-way along and take a not-very-pleasant path across some scree and back to the chairlift, or you can carry on all the way to the end of the ridge and down to Ospitale, where there are buses back to Cortina. We chose the second option, which included no less than 1600m of descent but took a very pretty zigzagging path off the mountain. Most other people seemed to be taking the other route down, so we had the path more or less to ourselves and returned to the bottom with aching knees and heads full of the stunning airy views from the ridge.

Ferrata dei Alpini

Cinque Torri from Falzarego

A little-known part of the history of WW1 is the battles that were fought in the mountains of northern Italy. The Italians were defending their border with the Austro-Hungarian empire and the ridges and summits of the Dolomites became the equivalent of the trenches in northern France. It seems unbelievable that anyone could fight a war in an environment so treacherous that one insecure footing can kill a modern hiker, but they did, and more soldiers died in avalanches here than were killed by poison gas in the Somme. This was not really a front that advanced, but more a line of defence, and the only territory that was won in the long-term was when Sud Tirol was handed over to Italy and became what is now called Alto Adige. Cortina is in the largely Italian speaking part of the region but in the towns and villages to the north, people speak German and have a stronger regional than national identity.

Remains of a WW1 Hospital at Falzarego

One of the consequences of the war that remains to this day is the network of vie ferrate , or "iron ways" that crisscross the Dolomites. These were originally built to allow the soldiers to traverse the mountains and are essentially assisted rock-climbing routes made up of metal cables that you clip on to, and sometimes steps and ladders attached to the rocks. The easier parts are just exposed hiking trails but the harder ones require real rock-climbing skills.

You can hire the climbing kit at the outdoor shops in Cortina for around 12 euros per day. As I had done one fairly scary via ferrata once before, as well as a (very small) amount of rock climbing, we decided on the first day to tackle a grade 3 route (out of 5), the Ferrata dei Alpini at Falzarego.

I was somewhat daunted by the vertical-ness of the cliff that confronted me at the beginning, but, knowing that rock-climbing is often easier than it looks, I clipped in and got started. Unfortunately, about 3 stages in, there was a point where I needed to step across ... or up ... or even just round a big lump of jutting out rock. And I tried, in every possible direction, with every possible body part, but I didn't yet have the balance in my legs or the strength in my arms and I just couldn't do it.

A little disappointed, I climbed back down and resigned myself to taking the walking path to the top of the route, admiring the view and taking pictures of all the pretty flowers along the way. And when my brother and his wife arrived at the top and confirmed that the rest of the climb was just as difficult (and much harder than the other grade 3s they had tried), I didn't regret my decision at all. Tomorrow, after all, would be another day.