The Onsight Chronicles

Here’s my report from our trip to the Dolomites in July last year.

We spent over two weeks in the mighty Dolomites, working our little arses off shooting a magazine feature on the climbing here. (Rock and Ice Magazine have now published this feature article).

It’s a stunning area and definitely one of the most interesting climbing areas I’ve visited; the cultural and climbing history is fascinating.

It’s such a large and significant climbing area I’d always wanted to visit and photograph it, but it’s so big and so complex I’d always wondered – where would one start?

We lucked out with the weather a lot of the time, some days were written off and there were thunderstorms most days which made getting on some of the long alpine routes extra errr, exciting, to say the least.

As first we based ourselves at Cinque Torre (Five Towers). There’s a great refugio and the crag is relatively close.

The view from our window…

…and the food… was great!

It was a good place to start to get to know the area especially when the weather wasn’t good.

Michael Schōn leading pitch two of the four pitch classic Finlandia (6b), on Torre Grande.

Klemen Kejzar climbing Per Elisa (6b+) at Cinque Torri.

One day at Cinque Torre Monique and I climbed five pitches to the top of Torre Grand, to check out some angles and access for a later photo shoot. Atop Torre Grand we met two experienced alpine climbers from America – Rico Miledi and David Russel (on the left above). They were spending their trip climbing precisely the kind of long routes I wanted to photograph and they kindly offered to help work with us to do some photos.

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Across the valley the longer routes on Tofana di Rozes (3225m) soon gained our attention…

So early the next day Rico and Monique and Dave and I teamed up as two parties of two and climbed the 14 pitch South Arete route on Tofana di Rozes.

That’s me taking a break after pitch five.

I followed Dave lugging the D3 so I could stop any time, hang off the rope, and shoot Rico and Monique climbing.

Rico leading pitch 10.

Dave and Rico at the pitch 12 belay.

Monique topping out.

Moving quickly we topped out at 2pm, followed the decent trail which traverses across this dodgy scree covered ledge with a nice drop-off to it’s side… (the scene of at least one fatality), and were just back on the main trail when the storm struck. Such was our timing and good luck for this trip.

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We spent a few days in the Sella Group in the central Dolomites and climbed and photographed several routes around here.

We climbed the Forth Sella Tower (on the left in the photo above) and were also just walking out out from this one when a storm struck. I couldn’t recommend this nine pitch route, it was a load of choss. Even so, I must admit many of the long alpine rock routes here do offer truly memorable experiences. Maybe that’s because many of them have poor rock and often come with the full set of alpine challenges …

One good route we did was the Punta Delle Cinque Dita Traverse (Five Finger Towers), it’s 205m to the “Thumb” (the entire traverse is 600m). It’s located in the Sassolungo Group – just across the valley from the Sella Towers.

The Five Finger Towers is left of center in the photo above and the route takes the right skyline arete in the photo below.

The route is popular so we made sure we caught the first lift for the day. The lift is fun and funky. It’s the oldest one in the Dolomites and takes two at a time — standing room only and it doesn’t slow down when you jump on.

Monique leading pitch nine.

Dave and Monique on the summit of the “Thumb”.

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On the eastern side of the Dolomites we hiked up to the very cool Vajolet Towers. Some of the scenes from Cliffhanger were filmed around the corner from here.

I climbed a small pinnacle across a from the Delago Tower then a white out rolled in and I proceeded to sit waiting in freezing wind for one a half hours.

Just some Alpine choughs for company…

Finally, luckily, the cloud started to break up and I could at last start getting some shots of Dave and Rico on the four pitch Delagokante route.

Flirting with the bad weather paid off; I am truly delighted with the shots. Dave and Rico — I can’t thank you both enough — you guys are seriously hard core and true legends for sticking it out so long!

Back at the refigio that night it was time to kick back and celebrate a successful days work and celebrate well – just being alive. A few days earlier Dave and Rico had had a near death hypothermic experience caught in storm below the top of a 20 pitch route.

The refigio owner had taken a liking to us and pulled out the “friendship bowl” and filled it with coffee, spirits and lord knows what else, and passed it around. I was to learn this is a great Italian tradition – so you can’t really say no …

Things started getting a bit weird when the gun came out!

And the grog kept flowing … Rico did us proud and and downed everything that was offered.

The mighty Dolomites. What a great trip!