Northern Italy

Walk to Rifugio Pradadali

The weather had not been great for the last week. Unfortunately it got worse when we arrived at Pale di San Martino. Visibility was like this for much of our walk in to Rifugio Pradadali.

How big is the drop below? Who knows? We could never see more than a couple of switchbacks below us!

Wired section leading up to Passo di Ball. We didn't bother using our harnesses for this.

Clouds lift slightly as we approach Passo di Ball.

But quickly close in again - looking back the way we came from Passo di Ball

Tom on Passo di Ball

Visibility when we arrived at Rifugio Pradadali at 6pm (bearing in mind it sunset is not till about 9pm)

Enjoying our 3 course meal at Rifugio Pradadali.

I woke up early and managed to get some views about 6:30am.

Looking down the valley

Views from the front of the Rifugio

Looking back up towards Passo di Ball - we had seen none of this last night.

But only 2 hours later when we left the cloud had come back in. No sign of the peaks now.

Lake above Rifugio Pradadali

Tom slogging it up a hill

I walked straight up this snow drift, Tom's shoes weren't quite so sticky so he picked his way up the side.

We seemed to spend quite a bit of time trudging through the snow on the way out. Firstly it was raining... then it started snowing. Ah summer in Italy.

Rifugio Rosetta (centre right) and Funivia Rosetta (chairlift - centre left) in the distance - our destination is in sight!

Having dried out and back at the car Tom is happy to discover we have some chamois cabanossi.

Sentiero Attrezzato Rio Sallagoni

The next day at much lower altitude (and therefore much warmer and better weather) we did Sentiero Attrezzato Rio Sallagoni. It was a via ferrata up a canyon, and the hardest graded ferrata we did during the trip. I guess like most grading systems they are easy to criticise - this route did have 2 slightly overhung moves, but it was pretty short and I didn't have any problems with it. Whereas some of the easier graded routes we'd done in the previous week were much longer and I'd found more difficult.

Tom concentrating on clipping in.

At the end of the via ferrata section. There were 2 waterfalls in the canyon, but other than those the rest of the canyon could have been walked through.

We then kept going through the upper section, which was not a via ferrata, but there were lots of stemples. In our case it meant we managed to keep our feet dry. I imagine we would have been able to climb up without the stemples but would have got pretty wet.