24 July 1989 - Alta Via 2 - Days 10, 11 and 12 - The Laggers' Tale

The Laggers' Tale

Monday 24 July

Laurie and Martin W wake to Italian pop music in a room full of kids. Re-pack and down to a free breakfast of a bowl of coffee with croutons.

Then goodbye to the kids and off down the lane once again. Across meadows into woods, on a path that although wet, was not too slippery, now rising steeply and joining a boulder field which passes for a stream bed. The landslip mentioned in the Guidebook seems to have settled down.

Rounding a high corner we see there is still a lot of climbing to do. Relieved to find the threatened 'slippery cliff' not too steep and provided with a long chain. 

Two hundred metres bring us to a water supply, then a very steep scree slope with no zigzags requires careful navigation between uncertain boulders.

A raven at the top eyes me up until he's sure I've made it - with about five yards to go. Brew up while waiting for Martin, but he's not long. Then a speedy descent to Bivacco Feltre since thunder is threatening. A long stop here with onion soup.

An Italian arrives from Pradidali. Then the hut minder tells us to whizz off if we are to avoid the rain. So knocking an hour off Martin Collins' three hour estimate, we arrive at the Boz Hut just before it pours. Thunder clouds are constantly visible from the superb contouring path.

Army lads from Britain are in the hut. They not qualified to carry ice axes. They are having an easy and paid 'Adventure Training' and had avoided  Forcella di Comedon. They spent a long time trying to get the right sort of receipt in the morning. Rif Boz is a fine hut - cheap, good food and friendly.

Saxifrage, possibly Particulate or Livelong

The unmentionable aerial ropeway at Rif Boz

Sunset at Rif Boz

Getting ready to leave Rifugio Bruno Boz

Tuesday 25 July

We stroll up to Passo Finestre, go through this and the path contours airily, narrow and exposed. It also has much more vegetation than we are used to seeing. At one point the side starts to overhang and it is necessary to turn one's rucksack outwards - and in one place crawl. There's a plaque in memory of someone who evidently forgot to do this.

A knife edge leads to Sasso Scarnia, and the path begins to ascend seriously, firstly by steps cut into the rock, then zigzags becoming spectacularly exposed. Only at the path summit can we relax our concentration, where it winds around huge boulders. The people who told us that this last section was uninteresting were certainly wrong. 

We descend 100 metres for a brew stop, passing an Italian leading a distinctly unenthusiastic family group. There are a few spots of rain. A wallcreeper flies past, a new species for me.

As the path gets easier, our concern is taken by the weather. There is a thunderstorm over the next range, so we don't hang around - me especially. The thunder rumbles from time to time in the hills above us, and I notice that not all the lightning gets a roll of thunder.

Martin says it thundered every time he reached a pass.

(Laurie's entry ends here - it must have been inserted after we all got home. And despite my efforts, I may have placed Martin W's photos in the wrong order, with some of the easier looking terrain perhaps coming after the Sasso Scarnia knife edge pictured above.)

Wednesday 26 July (see Martin W's footnote below)

Final view of the mountains before continuing to Venice

Martin W and Laurie (according to the picture Martin has sent me) had a quick look around Venice before flying home.

Martin W has added:

Writing over 30 years since this walk, memories are fragmented, mixed up and dim.  Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the worldwide web a few miles away at CERN in Switzerland and had yet to develop the first browser.   These days we can fly over the route in 3D on Google Earth; good, but not quite as exhilarating as being there.  I also have some photos, which somehow make it seem like yesterday.  As far as I can recall we did the whole route from Rifugio Boz to Feltre in one day – about 16 miles on the map, but it was also a bit hilly.  After Boz, my photos show the knife edge leading to Sasso di Scarnia and an exposed traverse that does not appear to be supplied with any protective cable.  Somehow some of those photos are of me - so maybe we swapped cameras.   Unusually, no photos of the summit, but the photo on the descent route does trigger a vivid memory of seemingly endless zig-zags on the way down.  As it got darker and track turned to tarmac, the lights of Feltre could be seen below, on the right then on the left and back again, but never seemed to get any closer.   Short-cuts between zigs and zags were few and I began to tire after the long and exciting day.  Sometimes I just wanted to dive in the bushes and get my head down for a nap.  Laurie was in better shape and kept me going by being just ahead of me the whole way.  Finally made it to Feltre just before 11pm, where Laurie used his language skills to find a small hotel that was still open.  Somehow I remember the tiny shower clearly.  I was so tired I could hardly stand up, but the pink cubicle was so small that I didn’t have a choice. Nevertheless, it was just so welcome and refreshing!

The next day we had a celebratory gelato. The photo must be self-timed I think, predating the vogue for selfies.  It’s a pity about my orange clown’s nose.  Note that Laurie is (and therefore has been) carrying a pair of 10x50 binoculars that probably weigh about a kilogram!  This is classic Laurie, a strong, idiosyncratic walker sadly missed.  He probably had a book or three in his pack as well.  The railway station was on the edge of town and we passed a “Feltre” sign that we stood under for another proto-selfie, perhaps an indication that we were both relieved to get to the town the night before.   Then we had a short (and cheap!) train ride to Venice, where we still had a time for a bit of wandering around before our flight.