We caught an evening flight out of SFO after wrapping up most of our affairs in the US. As usual the flight was vaguely miserable and interminable. We landed mid morning at Paris Orly, which was vastly preferable to Charles De Gaulle. We took a quick little shuttle to our rental car place, and after about 4 minutes we had the keys to our brand new Citroen C3. We packed it to the gills with way to much stuff and drove directly to Lorient. We were there to see our boat for the first time, which was exciting. Lorient was an interesting town, with a rich sailing and racing history. We enjoyed our time there and are looking forward to picking up our boat there in October.

From Lorient we drove to Montpellier, La Grande Motte, Eze, Monaco, Lake Garda, and then to Cortina.

In Cortina we met up with Kate’s best friend, Jamie and her husband J. We had a fun couple of days exploring the mountains and eating tasty Italian food. From Cortina we took a bus and started what we thought would be the famous hike, Alta Via 1, from South to North.

We started hiking around 2:30pm after getting some pizza in Belluno. The trail was more or less up. There was a very nice little creek running down the hill along the trail, and we took the opportunity to jump in. This was refreshing, since the hike was stiflingly hot and humid. Freshened up from the cold water, we continued up to the hut, called Alpini VII. There we bought some chocolate, and learned that the route that was shown on my hastily downloaded GPX route was in fact a quite difficult via feratta. The girl in the hut said that it was one of the hardest ones she had ever done. Cool. Since we did not have any via feratta gear, we re-evaluated our strategy. There was really no good solution, as there was a large mountain range in between us and the actual beginning of the AV1. Upon some reflection we began up some trails heading off to the east, with the vague idea of going down and around before regaining the trail.

As we kept going up and up, I noticed a spur trail that took off to the north, and ended at the top of a mountain, Monte Pelf. Upon inspection, it looked like it should be possible to work our way off the north side of the mountain back down to where we were supposed to be. There also looked like there were some flat areas where we could possibly pitch a tent. This turned out to not be strictly true.

We decided to take a chance, and committed to another 1000 meter ascent to the top of the peak. We were limited on food, and had only one liter of water between the two of us. Drinking out of occasional puddles we found on the mountainside, we ascended steeply into the clouds. The mountain was very steep grass with occasional rock outcroppings. The trail was faint and occasionally washed out and muddy. It was an intense time, as a slip would send you for a very long fall. We were mentally exhausted as we climbed up and over the last rocky outcropping, assisted by fixed cables, and emerged onto a steep summit block. There was the customary crucifix on top and a small, half-heartedly created bivy spot. We briefly weighed our options. We could bivy here, completely exposed to any weather, or try to descend the way we came, something neither of us relished. We did our best to set up the tent, and decided to hope really hard the calm weather would hold.

It was a completely still night, and we woke up feeling a little better about our chances. I walked a little way down the ridge to the north, and in the daylight it looked a lot more reasonable than the night before. There was red paint on some of the rocks, and in the difficult spots there were cables. I returned to camp, and we decided to go for it. To make a long story shorter, it was a bit marginal, and there was some intense exposure. We pushed it a little harder than we wanted, but we made it safely to a rocky and snowy col, and then a steep trail that rejoined AV1.

The next couple days were pleasant, as we went up and down steep passes and ate delicious lunches and snacks at the mountain huts dotting the countryside. In one you got a free beer if you could do 15 pull-ups, or one one handed. I did not take them up on their offer.

Out trip got cut a bit short, as we were not moving as fast as we thought we would. We ended up bailing and hiking out down a long paved road. We made it back to Cortina and spent the night in a euro-campground. Cleaning up and relaxing a bit was nice, and we relaxed. The next day we drove to Milan.