A Life-Altering Climb

FYI: writing this post has not been easy. I have written about it. Deleted it. Written it. Deleted it. Too many times to count. I struggle between sharing it and keeping it to myself. We have told no one about this, yet. Nothing but good and supportive comments have ever come out of my writing and truthfulness, so here it goes.

At dinner that night, I sat across from my husband with tears in my eyes, and I asked him, “how do I ever explain this to someone? How do I put into words this experience in a way that anyone could ever understand? How do we tell our friends and family that I felt like I was going to die today up on a mountain? And that this might have been a one-way climb for us…how do I tell them that I told you I loved you more than once along the way because I wanted those to be my last words to you if anything happened.” He responded with, “you can’t. No one could fathom the magnitude of things that we went through today. Only the two of us who were up there together will ever understand.” I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. While I started this blog as a diary of my travels, I always promised to share the good, the bad, and the ugly. This was definitely the ugly. And one way or another, I will find a way to put into the words the events that happened to us up on the Punta Anna ridgeline in the Dolomites of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

The Background Story

If you read my last post, you know the weekend prior to this was our FIRST time completing a via ferrata (a type of fixed rope mountain climbing). We started with a “too easy” trail on the Gran Cir and then decided to do another one in the same day, Piccola Cir, which was of medium difficulty. It’s obviously safe to say we caught the climbing bug. Therefore, when Stephen came home Thursday night saying he didn’t have to work Friday, I got online and booked us a hotel for the three day weekend in Cortina d’Ampezzo – one of my favorite mountain towns in the whole world! The last time we visited here was back in October of 2017 and I fell in love. We knew there were lots of via ferrate in the Cortina area and we’d figure out which trail we’d try out on Friday when we got there.

While walking through town Friday afternoon, we found a sign outside of a via ferrata shop. Even though they were closed, we were still able to snap a picture of all the routes in the area. We would look at these later at dinner to decide which one to do. It gave a great description of the routes, along with the distance, the level of difficulty, and other important information, all which you can see in the picture below.

Climbing Day

Saturday morning, we had a hearty breakfast at Hotel Villa Neve, then drove up a half hour to the starting point of the trail at Rifugio Dibano. Usually you would be able to take the ski lift up to Rifugio Pomedes, but of course, we’re visiting in the offseason and the ski lifts don’t open until late June / early July. We hiked at an incline for about 45 minutes to an hour when we finally reached the Rifugio where the ski lift ran to around 10:00. We spotted a big rock with the words “Via Ferrata” and an arrow pointing up, so we knew we were on the right path. We could see the iron cables just up the way.

The first problem arose when we had to jump a sloping patch of snow in order to get to the actual cables. I was huffing and puffing from the sucky hike up and then jumping over set me off balance. But anyways, we were able to hook in and I finally got back into the groove of climbing. We climbed up, over, up again, over, and continued climbing. For the most part, even though this was a challenging route (which I wouldn’t learn until later), I was quite confident along the way and never once fell while being hooked in. There were plenty of drop-offs, steep edges, and sections with slippery footholds, but overall, I felt safe.

Working on my climbing form

Pointing us to the top

Making our way to the top

Lots of jigsaw parts to the cable

View the valley behind me

Stephen in front of Tofana di Rozes, a 10,600+ foot (3200+m)

We continued along the way for a few hours. Stephen decided to hand the GoPro over to me to film for a while. In order to do this, he had to go in front of me. We came upon a ledge and all I hear him say is “oh wow, don’t look down.” GREAT. He continues climbing up while I’m filming and when I reach the section that he was standing at, I take a glance down. Big mistake. Pretty sure my heart jumped up out of my throat. I try to stay calm and climb the perfectly vertical path, but my feet keep slipping and there weren’t great handholds anywhere. I couldn’t focus on climbing AND filming at the same time. I didn’t like not having Stephen below me as a safety, so we switched back to him taking the GoPro once I made it up the exposed cliff. (This is a huge reason why there aren’t that many videos of him.)

We hit 3 false peaks before we finally got to the summit of Punta Anna, which we didn’t actually know was the summit. Before we began this climb from the bottom by the Rifugio, it seemed clear where the top was. But, once we started hiking, every time we thought we saw the peak, there would be a peak higher where the trail continued. It was sort of a jigsaw all the way to the top. Around 1:30 pm, 4.5 hours of nonstop climbing later, we reached the summit of Punta Anna at 2,743 meters. My legs were jello, my right arm had contusions from shoulder to elbow from where I had to pull myself up at times, and I was just super exhausted. We sat down, snapped a pic, snacked on some meat, then continued along the way.

One time we thought we made it to the peak

Obligatory picture at the summit

Happy to be at the top at 1:30 pm. 4.5 hours later

The sun was hiding behind the clouds, causing the temperature to drop. I had to throw my sweatshirt on before we descended because it had gotten so cool. We got to a split in the via ferrata path. An arrow pointing up went to the next mountain, along with another via ferrata trail – a mountain that seemed twice as large as the one we were on. There was no way we were going that way and we weren’t going back down the challenging path that we had just come up. We decided upon the “escape route” which pointed to Rifugio Giussani and would return us to the starting point. However, once we got down to the end of the cable, we realized that the actual trail had been completely wiped out by the landslide. We had to improvise.

The best way to describe this point in our descent was that we came to a section of the trail where we turned a corner and saw that the trail passed underneath a good 30 ft section, completely covered in snow. The original path through the snow had been eroded because of rain and mush so there was no way to cross directly through the snow. There were two options: to go below this gigantic patch of snow, which was nothing but lose scree leading down to a 500 ft cliff or go to the top across the patch of snow and scurry between the edge of the cliff and the snow – which could’ve resulted in the entire section of snow collapsing and us sliding down with it. We went for the upper route because at least we would have snow to “fall back on” instead of just tumbling off the edge of a cliff full of scree.

Stephen went first. He tried his best to make footholds in the snow, along with using the rocks as handholds and as footholds whenever there was a ledge. We had to go up and over along the cliff/snow. It felt like we were there for hours. I had never been this scared in my life. A couple of times we both slipped into the crevice that was created between the separation of the rock and snow. We would fall shoulder deep with a wall of snow on one side and a cliff on the other, having to pull ourselves out with only upper body strength. I followed in Stephen’s exact footsteps along the way, but sometimes the snow was too soft and would give way and I would fall in the crevice again. We often had no idea how far down it was and all I could picture in my head was me falling into this deep hole and getting stuck without any way of being rescued. I had such a difficult time getting over my fears in this section of the “trail”, but Stephen remained strong for the both of us, always coaching me where to put my hand or foot or how to get up when I was stuck in the crevice. Near the end of the snow patch, we had to make a leap over to a rock and my short legs wouldn’t reach. All of the sudden the snow gave out underneath me and I began sliding down the mountain. At that point in time, I saw my life flash before my eyes. It was the most traumatic experience. I knew I was a goner. Stephen reached out his hand and I grabbed on for dear life, but I had nothing left in me to pull myself up. He somehow managed to pull me up and secure me to him and I just lost it. I had never in my entire life been that close to experiencing the inevitable.

Completely shook, we finally made it to the other side of the snow patch, continued along the via ferrata descent path, and I had never been so happy to see an iron cable to hook into. At least I knew I was secure and wasn’t going to slide down the mountain.

Once we got to the end of the iron rods, Stephen noticed that there was nothing but snow, rock, and scree as far as the eye could see. The entire trail had been washed out. We had no way to get to the Rifugio that we were making our way to, and there was no path to get down. I lost it. I didn’t take this news very well. I was overwhelmed. I broke down and proceeded into an uncontrollable crying fit. I was mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. I felt like I had almost died sliding down a patch of snow off the side of a mountain and now there was no way for us to get down. I begged for Stephen to call for help. He looked me sternly in the eye and he told me to quit crying because it wasn’t helping the situation. He said, “I need you to help ME get off this mountain.” My heart broke. I knew I was being selfish because it wasn’t just about me. There were two of us stuck up here and we had to work as a team to get down. We certainly couldn’t turn around and go back across that frightening snow patch. The only way forward was to make our own path.

When we talked about this exact scenario later during our brain dump, Stephen referred to this as the “nice talk” he gave me to appeal to my senses. It worked needless to say, although it was not “nice” at the time!

There was no other way to get down the mountain except to take the risk and go straight down the snow, scree, and hope to God there wasn’t a drop-off at the end. We could see the forest below us and a trail leading back to the rifugio, but between here and there was a mystery.

Stephen tied us together with the rope that he always brings along when climbing. We were about 5 feet apart in length. Down the mountain, we proceeded at a 60-degree slope for about a kilometer. I couldn’t feel my legs from falling in the snow so often, so Stephen basically dragged me for most of the way. We were at risk of creating a landslide, an avalanche, or sliding and never being able to stop. Somehow, someway, we made it to the bottom of this mountain. My butt was bruised, my hands were numb, I had holes in my pants, and I was covered in rocks and muds. I could see the fatigue despite the smile on his face.

It may not look steep, but it was, trust me

Grumpy and smirky

Stephen literally dragging me down the mountain

We finally made it on an actual trail down in the valley and continued back to our car, arriving around 1645…8 HOURS later. Stephen handed me the bottle of Porto that he had brought along, and I chugged as fast as I could. I had never been so happy to see greenery, solid ground, our car, and wine.

And the rain started

We made it to the bottom of the scree

That’s not water in this bottle.

Trail Specifications

To reference the difference of the two previous trails we completed, below are the difficulty ratings.

The Fletcher/Smith rating system consists of two parts. The first is a number, from 1 (easiest) to 5 (most difficult), which indicates the straight technical difficulty. The Hofler / Werner rating system is a single letter, ranging from A (easiest) to G (hardest).

• Punta Anna (this trail) – 2743 m / 9000 ft | Fletcher/Smith Rating: 5C | Hofler/Werner Rating: F
• Piz da Cir V (second trail completed) – 2520m / 8267′  |  2A | C
• Gran Cir (first trail completed) – 2592m / 8503ft  |  1A |  A

Lessons Learned

In order to move forward from this, we both are taking a step back to reevaluate what went wrong and what we could’ve done to prevent this. Honestly, there was no better option for getting down the mountain, and we had no way to know that the trail had been washed away. There was no indication on any website, tourist site, or even the tourist center located in downtown Cortina. It was a hard lesson learned. Although I cussed mountain climbing the whole time Stephen was dragging me down that mountain and said I would never do it again, I couldn’t imagine NOT doing it again. It’s an adrenaline rush, I feel stronger, and it’s a sense of accomplishment summiting a mountain peak. We both promise to be smarter, but I wanted to share my story as I always have.

I said that one day we would look back on this and laugh about it, but I haven’t gotten to that point yet. It wasn’t until later that night that Stephen confessed how frightened he had become in moments, not for his sake, but for mine. I have no idea if whoever reading this can even fathom the danger that we went through, but for us, or me at least, it was life-altering. I said I would have nightmares about that damn snow patch. Instead, all I can think about is the next via ferrata trail we can go do together – obviously, we will do way more research and avoid any “challenging” ones for the time being. I was shook, I am shaken, and I still haven’t come to terms with how to process it all. But, I survived. And survival is one of the most addicting feelings ever.

We don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tradgedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.

-Isabel Allende

XOXO

Summer