Brandler-Hase, Cima Grande di Lavaredo

When Saule was a kid, she visited the Dolomites and after seeing the Tre Cime decided that she was into climbing. Twenty years later she finally went up the north face of the Cima Grande and I got to tag along.

Saules family back in the day

Saules family these days.

We chose the Brandler-Hase route, which goes pretty much straight up the center of the North face of the Cima Grande. Steep and slightly overhanging rock was the name of the game for the climb. Just like our training ground at “the bridge”!

After getting rather confused on the first pitch, we cruised the rest of the red and yellow wall in the morning until we reached the infamous overhanging corner pitches. They were pretty wet and steep, so we had to put in some strenuous effort to free the whole thing.

My forearms were blasted after one particularly slimy pitch, so in the last two steep bits, I was squeezing all my body parts into the cracks, chicken-winging, butt-jamming and kneebarring my way up to save the last few drops in the tank. A blend of techniques from the repertoire of a sport climber and a thug! Classic.

A final surprise came in the form of the exit chimney, which was soaking and looked like a shower... Saule decided she wasn’t having any of it and went on a crusade diagonally leftwards for a couple of pitches to join the Dibona Arete. We then got to the summit and started our way down the classic route, climbed for the first time in 1869 using crampons!

The classic route must have been an exciting and glorious climb in the mid-19^th century, but now it was an utter junkshow. Since everyone goes down Cima grande using this route, we got stuck in massive queues, with people using ropes where they really shouldn't (as in not to pull their friends off ) and not using them where they should. Added to that, the route follows a bunch of ledges with loose rock interspersed with short abseils. With little care taken by most of the people on the way down, the loose rock is often dislodged and can come flying down when another poor soul is hanging on a rope...

To mitigate this, we decided to hang around near the top for a bit longer and let most of the people pass by. This way we got to complete our duolingo targets for the day and enjoy some very cool views as the sun was starting to set.

Coming back to the family theme, I also had some fun climbing on the Cinque Torri with my parents. Since we did some climbing in Chamonix a week ago, we were moving quite efficiently. But that was just the start for my parents. They immediately got into racing with other parties on the wall, climbing neighbouring routes. So we ended up speeding up and I had to work hard to keep up with them. We covered a lot of ground in a day and ticked a few of the rock towers there while having a great time. The pizzas were well deserved!