Colossal Colesei Clamber

Been building up to some more serious climbing,  and Sunday was the day. Turned out to be over 700m of up, and another pretty warm day – a fair old workout. There was a nasty moment about half way when the traverse across the face of the slope almost got the better of us, but really glad we pressed on, as the views  we found at the top were glorious.

The Plan

We drove an hour SE to an area called the Sexten Dolomites. Made a bad start when I tried to pull onto a small track and grounded the car – horrible grinding sound, but no new BDO apparent ( thank you, Google Maps).  Drove the long way round instead, to park at Rifugio Lunelli. The route we planned to follow was a “moderate” one , according to our app ( Outdoor Active).

The Reality

It was a fairly gentle ascent at first on a decent track through forest, then we popped out on a kind of saddle. Trickiest part was the traverse of the main slope – path was tiny, steep, covered in loose scree, and with precipitous drop to our left. What we had expected to be the hardest part was the sharp rock climb that followed ( between 30-57% ), but actually the toughest bits of that were assisted by cables and via ferrata steps, so quite fun.

Then at the top we dropped into a natural limestone bowl with, would you believe, dry stone walls.  Eeeh, it wa’ just like ‘ome.

The first rifugio we found was not accepting guests, but luckily there was one open on the way down where we could grab a refreshing Erdinger.

Steep zig-zag path back to the start took no time at all – although we were overtaken by a young couple carrying a baby in a backpack ( nothing like early exposure to the great outdoors).

We really enjoyed this one – and a great sense of achievement.