At 3000 meters high to get there with the lifts, with the first chairlift to Rifugio Son Forca Rio Gere and then with the "picturesque" cable car up to the Forcella Staunies. From there the ferrata Marino Bianchi to leave the top of the crystal and the beaten trail Ivano Dibona converted from these In 1970, inland mountain equipped by the First World War.
arrival we opened the metal door of the torpedo a guy who seems Vasco Rossi, shaky and nauseated from motion sickness (I do not at this altitude would have expected), we left a ladder-type condominium that brings about top of the fork, with a view on the opposite side of the mountain, and from there a ladder that leads us on the rocky ridge, like the back of a huge petrified camel. Here the strings are new, extended and attached to metal poles cemented well and stable. I do not remember it.
Twenty-five years ago, a cord tied in a double life, with a hook at the other end, was all that I was assured by a wire black and sometimes a little 'frayed which bypasses the most difficult points of the route. Today I wear a harness with a Mountaineer crossing the thighs, double hook, sink and a helmet light. Comparisons are discounted. On the bridge of "cliffhanger" about 30 meters long, it seems to me to fly light and the excess in four strides. I remembered the most swinging and insecure, with sleepers sciupacchiate here and there. Just as well, here we are the children.
Later you start to go down to the first ruins of military ambushes: Luigi stops to drink on the first patch of snow surrounding the fork Padeon, under a bright sun burning on the uncovered skin of the face and neck.
The mountain had these houses with cement and bricks brought up here who knows what the price (they did not have the cable car) under enemy fire. Remain standing after a century of abandonment and neglect, exposed to harsh climatic conditions of these heights. Our soldiers, even if worse organized and supplied, they were great men and knew how to do these things so well that despite everything they were going to win. Still, the admission of Perrero Buffa is there to accommodate the summer hikers in search of shelter.
We try to take pictures, hoping that the strong contrast given by the sun on the rocks is not able to alter too much. The first time we had taken the 400 ASA film to make better development. Here, too, has changed the shape (and weight) of our equipment, like the shoes that you put on today, about 3 pounds less than those climbers with a crust that was pulling me back.
of a sudden you open a view over the valley below, with all Cortina gathered around the bell tower of the cathedral stretched Alemagna on Route 51. The tips of Pomagagnon, from under the immense camp of Fiames, rocky hills that seem to prevent us from locating the trailer that houses near the river Boite: everything is so small and far away that seems to observe a plastic architecture.
successive steps on ledges and large pretty safe, even if at some point I would like be able to hook my cable to the snap is not there. More and more we proceed old nails to support the rope, smaller and darker, sometimes broken, reflecting maintenance of a less than perfect.
Until you get to the Big Fork, where you must go down a steep and treacherous scree debris that can make you raise huge clouds of red dust, as if you were in the excavation of a construction site, which enters the nose and is coughing. A signal to halt recent intimate and forces us to divert to a rocky ridge that falls steeply at times and set among jagged rocks and slippery.
arrive early and pines we lie exhausted in their shade, so I can to paste resin bag and pants. Shortly thereafter, the noise of a source in the rock reminds us, as Bedouins in the desert, and drink water from that source, pure and fresh.
Climb into the forest to Rifugio Son Forca, not before he had met two German colleagues, much younger than us, in broken English as much as ours, we are praised for the cleanliness of our clothing, as well as to ask the closing time of the chairlift. When I tell them that I had already been here five years ago, most do not seem to account who they are talking: then comforted them by telling them that they are young and strong. They thought we were two professional climbers. Maybe ... !
