Mountain rock climbing above Misurina

Between our days at Cinque Torrie, and to finish our trip we had two excellent days out rock climbing above Misurina. The first was a short day on Diedro Mazzorana and the second was the long mountain multi pitch route Mazzorana. Diedro Mazzorana With another day with a poor afternoon forecast, we found the easily accessible Diedro Mazzorana which climbed Monte Popena Basso in 4 pitches. After getting hopelessly lost on the approach thanks to the awful description in the Rockfax book we just about decided that we still had enough time to climb the route. The first pitch was excellent with some enjoyable corner climbing, and just enough gear to keep me comfortable. The second pitch was fairly scrappy, which took us towards the chimney feature for the outstanding final two pitches. The final two pitches involved excellent chimney climbing, with some outstanding exposure, bridging, face climbing and a little bit of thrutching for good measure.  The views from the summit were excellent, and the descent back down was very easy which made for an excellent morning out. When we got back down to Misurina we had a quick,. Read the full article…

Two Mornings at Cinque Torri

We had a couple of mornings climbing at Cinque Torrie as we had forecasts with a nice morning, followed by a stormy afternoon. Climbing at Cinque Torrie meant that we could easily approach with a chairlift, followed by a short walk in. Day 1 On the first morning we climbed the classic Via Normale on Quarta Bassa, which was fully bolted. It is a very classic route, but as we got the first chairlift we were the first on the route. We ran some pitches together to climb the route in two excellent pitches. After a quick photo on the top we had an atmospheric abseil down into a cave between Quarta Bassa and Quarta Alta. We were very glad for the early start as by the time we had got back to our bags, the initial pitches of the route were chaos as there were about 3 separate teams climbing the route at the same time. As the bad weather had not yet arrived, we then made the most of our 60m ropes by climbing a two pitch sport route, Bassa Thirteen, as a single pitch. The route climbed. Read the full article…

Via Ferrata Punta Anna & Lamon/Formenton

The Punta Anna via ferrata is a classic route which climbs Punta Anna and then continues onto Tofana di Mezzo by combining three via ferratas: Ferrata di Punta Sant Anna, Ferrata Guiseppe Olivieri and then Ferrata Gianni Aglio. It is a long route which is graded 5c, so a fairly serious undertaking. Usually this route would finish at the lift station at Tofana di Mezzo, however at the start of July this lift was not yet open. This meant we had to descend using two other via ferratas (Ferrata Lamon and Formenton) which also involved climbing another peak, Tofana di Dentro. As the book gave this day 12 hours we reluctantly had yet another early start. The walk into the route from Rifugio Dibona was a harsh wake up in the morning as it was very steep. We arrived at the base of the route at the same time as another British couple, who we ended up spending the entire day with which was a lovely addition to our day. The climbing was very interesting as it was mainly focussed on rock and was also fairly technical whilst also not. Read the full article…

Tomaselli via ferrata

With a poor afternoon forecast we decided to have an early start on the Tomaselli via ferrata in order to avoid the crowds and make sure we were back down before the rain arrived. Apparently this route used to have the reputation of being the hardest via ferrata in the Dolomites. We joined the many other vans sleeping at the cable car station, which meant that we had as much sleep as possible before our early start. The morning was beautiful as there was not a cloud in the sky. The walk out of the car park was fairly brutal, and did lead to us questioning our decision to not use the lift, however the views were fantastic which did somewhat make up for the hard ascent. We made great time to the start of the route, as we were there before the cable car even opened. The start of the route was tricky, but not overly interesting as it required lots of cable pulling, interspersed with lots of very loose ledges. The second half of the route was significantly better than the first half. The rock was solid, the. Read the full article…