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Summertime in St. Moritz, Switzerland
Fresh mountain air, blue skies, snowy peaks, and a wide variety of outdoor summer sporting activities. You’ll find all of this and more in the lakeside town of St. Moritz, Switzerland. With only a four-day weekend, we wanted to stay somewhere within driving distance of home. We hadn’t explored very much of Switzerland, so we packed up our bags and headed northwest to escape the agonizing August heat of Italy. The first thing to note: Switzerland is expensive. The currency in Switzerland, CHF (Swiss Francs), is basically equivalent to 1 USD. However, everything is double to triple what it usually costs us. It’s not like staying in a campground in the…
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Hiking and Climbing in the Dolomites: Via Ferrata in Val di Fassa
This October we completed our fifth via ferrata of the year and the summit viewpoint was incredible. It was by far the longest of any hike/climb we had completed yet. 11 miles, 9 hours, and 3400 feet of hiking and climbing in Val di Fassa. It was exhausting – mentally and physically – but the feeling afterward of accomplishing that feat is something I’ll never tire of. I wanted to see the leaves changing and we hadn’t climbed in many months, so we headed to our favorite mountain range in all of Italy – the Dolomites. I did a little research and found a valley and area that we hadn’t…
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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…
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Lessons From a First Time Mountain Climber | Via Ferrata Style
Full disclosure: I am not an expert. As the title says, it was my FIRST time on a via ferrata in the Dolomites. All things I recommend below come with this caution and warning. Please consult your physician prior to performing any of these activities (or whatever the correct wording is here). I am able to write about these events and recommend them to others because I survived… so there you have it! I’ve never had a fear of heights. I grew up loving to go fast, ride every roller coaster, and go as high up as possible thanks to my dad. That was the one thing we loved to…
