Alpine Style!

The North Faces of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. The Cime Grande is the middle tower. 

After our twenty-one hour ordeal on Piz Badile, we both needed some rest time before considering our next adventure. A few days spent relaxing in St. Moritz and a visit to the newly opened Messner Mountain Museum in Bolzano, Italy could not have been better. Nearly a week later, our bodies were again ready, and our minds were eager for the heights. The weather in the Western Alps was still stormy while over in Eastern Europe they were experiencing a heat wave. We decided to head East and check out the Dolomites. Neither Cindy nor I had ever been there climbing before (though, I had done a little ice climbing in Val di Daone several years ago). Sticking with the “Six Classic” North Faces of the Alps theme, the Cime Grande di Lavaredo seemed a worthwhile and very tempting goal.
Being part of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo (or, simply the Tre Cime), the Grand (like our “Grand” Teton) is the tallest of the three peaks that make up the Lavaredo group. Often called “the greatest climbing monument on earth,” the Tre Cime is a striking site, indeed. They rise abruptly from the gentle plains of the surrounding valleys and high alpine meadows. Viewed from their most mellow aspect, the south, they still look as rugged and steep as the Tetons, with similar vertical rise, though these peaks are made of a grey and yellow limestone called Dolomite. The rock is more like that found in the Canadian Rockies, but unlike the Rockies which have steep faces and smooth, sloped backsides, the Dolomites rise steeply from all sides, often forming towers and needle like formations. When viewed from the north, the peaks look very foreboding, indeed. The Grand and the Ovest (West) Cime rise straight up from the plateau in sheer vertical faces like two halves of the same peak that had been cleaved apart then put side by side, revealing the sweet inside of the massive rock peak. Though there is no glacier on this North Face, the aura is nonetheless quite austere as there are few high peaks in the world that rise this abruptly in an unbroken, dead vertical climb towards their summits’.
Another interesting feature of this place is that the rock is void of the common weakness of dihedrals, cracks and chimney systems that would be the logical choice for routes for the first ascensionists. Instead, the classic routes here follow the easiest path possible up the steep faces, often wandering right then back left along the easiest holds, sometime traversing straight across for an entire pitch. Route finding can be a real challenge. The first ascensionists here definitely had their work cut out for them.
The Comici Route on the Grand Cime, forged a path up the steep face slightly right of center. Looking at the topo from the ground it was hard to see the logic behind the many traverses and wanderings as it climbed for 17 pitches to the ledge system below the summit. It was also hard to imagine what it would have been like in 1933, when Comici and the Dimai brothers climbed the route, to have even thought about heading up such a steep wall so void of obvious cracks. Since then, many other routes have been put up on all three of the summits, many of which are more modern, forging more or less straight paths up the faces with the protection of expansion bolts and at a high climbing standard. Just left of the Comici route lies the Hasse-Brandler, an 18 pitch 5.12, that was recently free soloed by Alex Huber. The Comici, has a few sections of mid grade 5.10, though is protected by pitons of dubious quality and on very steep ground. Hence, it is more commonly climbed by a mix of aid and free climbing in these difficult sections. A fall at one of the cruxes would have a fairly reasonable chance, in the this author’s opinion, of breaking or dislodging one or many of the pitons. Often, the pins had numerous slings of even more dubious quality tied to them. This made it easy to reach up and clip to, but hard if not impossible to clip directly to the pin itself. A large number of the pins were not driven in all the way and many of those were bent downward. “A fall?” I wondered. At least they were numerous enough. I brought four cams and four nuts to help supplement the fixed gear and that was about all I could use as the few cracks to be found were often behind loose-feeling blocks. No doubt, the route had been climbed hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, so most of the really loose stuff had been picked clean. Still, we found a few cookies waiting to be trundled.
We spent the night before our climb at the Riffugio :Lavaredo, which is just a half hour walk from the road on the south side of the mountain. The approach from there is just 40 minutes, so we did not have to get a super early start. We left the hut around 5:00 and were at the base, roped up and ready to climb by 6:00. There was just one party ahed of us. They must have stayed at the parking lot as we did not see them at the hut. Two easy pitches up a short pillar puts you right at the belly of the beast: six hard, steep pitches up the middle of the wall. Though short, these pitches take time negotiating around and over various overhangs and small corners. It was steep enough to haul so we did for the first two pitches. We only had one rope (probably a mistake, but I was trying to go as light as possible) so I could only haul on the pitches that were shorter than half a rope length (30 meters). The rock was cold, crrmpy, and did I mention it was steep? Super intimidating. After pitch eight, you could look down and see that you were away from the base of the route. In other words, the wall was slightly overhanging from here down. If you peed, it would clear the wall and land at least ten feet away from the base of it (not that I actually tried this). The climbing was much more strenuous than that found on the Piz Badile and it was very nice to have chalk. I could really feel it on the pitches climbed with the pack. Looking over at some climbers on the Hasse-Brandler, it was hard to imagine Huber soloing that route. It was hard to imagine free soloing this route. It must be like a whole different sport for that guy.
After eight pitches, though, the climbing eased up considerably. From here it was, at most, 5.8 to the top, though the protection became more sparse and the rock quality a bit more chossy. A wet chimney near the top put us at “the 25 meter traverse”, which was just what it is called: a dead horizontal traverse of 25 meters. It goes out above the lip of a huge roof and, though not difficult, it is wild and scary as there is only museum vintage pitons equipped with A4 faded slings for protection. A HUGE expanse of air sits just below your feet. At this point we had caught up to the other party, a very friendly and eager, early twenty-somethingsTyrollean crew. We passed by them here as they had a small route finding problem. They cheered on Cindy as she clung tenaciously and clawed her way across the traverse. They also kept reminding her of how much air was right below her feet, which really did not encourage her, but kept things interesting, nonetheless. Two sections on the traverse required some down climbing, which was fine for me in the lead, but a bit sketchy for Cindy following as a fall would have been like a real lead fall onto one of the antique pitons. She was slightly gripped despite the encouragement and advice from the boys slightly above her.

Two more chossy, but easy pitches saw us to the major ledge system below the summit. A simple, but airy traverse around to the south side put us below fourth class ledges to the top. At 4:00, we topped out, ten hours after starting our adventure at the base of the face. It had remained a little cloudy all day, but did not seem to threaten thunder and lightning. Typical of most peaks in the Alps, a crucifix adorned the summit and made for a good back-drop for the celebratory photos. On down we went with the Tyrollean boys. Though I had information on the standard route up, which would be relatively easy to descend, we opted to rap down an unknown descent on a steep, new climbing route. At first, this seemed like it might be a mistake. As we rapped into it, the wall fell away from us and became radically overhanging. How would we be able to get into the wall to get to the next station? But as we looked around, we could see that the route up traversed slightly around the over hangs. We had a couple of snags pulling the ropes, but overall, this descent got us to easy ground in just four very steep, double rappels. A slide down steep scree put us at the parking area and the Auronzo Refuge for food and beverage.