Boeseekofel, 13th August 2005

Not much more than 200m of IV+ looked like a nice way to finish off our holiday in the Dolomites, so five of us - Nerida Stores, Anthony Woodrow, Maria-Joao Cruz, Mario Pulquerio and I - took the chair lift up from Corvara to the Boe cirque in order to climb the Castiglioni-Detassis on the Boeseekofel. After a not very hurried start it was getting on for lunch time by the time we got to the via ferrata leading to the bottom of the SE Face, and later still by the time we sat at the bottom of the route looking up.

The weather was not all that inviting, and clouds swirled around us. Sometimes it was possible see the top, and sometimes it wasn't. There had been a few other parties on the via ferrata, but no one else seemed to want to go rock climbing that day. We held a brief conference on whether to go on, and then continued.

The first few pitches are easy, leading up to a large jammed block and then a broad ledge where it is necessary to walk left for maybe fourty meters to the start of the upper face. This is where the fun starts.

The main part of the route ascends a wide chimney that reaches from the ledge to the top in 5 pitches, with a dog-leg bend in the middle. The chimney was black and in its depths wet. Added to this, not only could we only sometimes see the top, we could now only sometimes see back down again. For August it was not warm either. I set off with Maria and Mario, and Anthony and Ned followed.

The climbing was surprisingly good fun. Although the depths of the chimney were wet, the right hand wall where the climbing went was dry and solid, and by any standards really nice to climb. It was steep and rough with big holds, and protection was also frequent enough for the difficulty of the climbing.

Unfortunately the cold put paid to the second party first. Anthony climbed the first pitch from the big ledge, but Ned's hands were so cold getting over the difficult step in the middle of the pitch that she didn't think she would be able to manage the rest, and they decided to retreat. As it turned out, this was the technical crux of the route, but we weren't to know that at this stage. It should be noted that Ned's first ever rock climb had been fewer than two weeks earlier.

I asked Maria and Mario what they fancied doing. One of the first times I had ever been climbing had been with Anthony and Maria on an autumn day eleven years earlier, on which Anthony and I survived dressed normally while Maria huddled behind a rock in her down jacket and moaned plaintively "It's so cold..." So it was that I was more than expecting to follow Anthony and Ned back to the chair lift. However, being eleven years older and having trekked around Annapurna in Nepal seemed to have changed her, as she was not at all interested in going down, and nor was Mario. Thankfully, considering how the weather would turn out later, both were sensibly dressed in Goretex jackets, which was more than could be said for me.

The climbing went on just as well as it had started, and pitch followed pitch of wonderful, steep, black rock. A lot of the time we could see about one pitch up and one down, but thankfully the route-finding was so straightforward that this itself wasn't a problem, other than that we were a bit nervous about hat the weather might do.

Round about five o'clock, the time at which the last lift for the valley leaves, I got to the top of the last steep pitch. It was possibly also the hardest to lead. For whatever reason I had managed to run low on quickdraws and protection, while still managing to get lots of rope drag. I had carried a Tricam ("good for the Dolomites") up the whole route without using it once, and now I found a hole in the rock through which I was able to thread it to make a belay. As Maria and Mario started to climb, it started to rain.

And then hail. It poured for the entire time that they were climbing that long pitch, for what seemed like at least the first twenty minutes with a mixture of hail and rain, which then gave way to steady rain. If I had had a sensible Goretex jacket on like the other two I might have had more sympathy with them struggling up a steep, dark chimney pitch in the wet. As it was, my sensible Goretex jacket was safe and sound in my tent in Corvara, and even my Montane wind shirt was inaccessible in my rucksack. (I didn't have a Reverso at the time, so couldn't just take time off from belaying to start taking my rucksack off.) By the time both arrived dripping wet at the top I was soaked through, frozen, and shivering. Just to one side of my belay was a small overhang with space for three to sit in relative shelter as we struggled out of our rock shoes and into our trainers (in my case) and sensible walking boots suitable for the Annapurna circuit (in Maria and Mario's case). Even then it looked over the top of the chimney somewhat uncomfortably. I wouldn't have wanted to sit there unbelayed.

From the top of the climb it was necessary to walk up to the summit of the Boeseekofel and from there back down to the chair lift... then from there back to the valley, since the chair lift would be long closed by the time we got there. Meanwhile it started to thunder. I was frozen and getting wetter by the minute in any case, so was not in the mood for enjoying the summit. Maria, on the other hand, was pleased at having got to the top and felt safe and sound in her Goretex jacket. Mario was thankfully quicker to realise that thunder on top of a 3000m mountain is not just an enjoyable spectacle, and, grabbing Maria by the hand, almost dragged her over the summit and down the other side.

From the shelter of the roof of the chair lift station we sent an SMS down to Anthony and Ned in the valley saying that we were safe and sound. Unfortunately the walk down from there was still rather long, and although the heavy rain had given way to steady, lighter rain, I was already cold enough that I wasn't warming up again. On the way through the wood something green hopped out of the grass and Maria was instantly transformed from mountaineer back to biology postdoc, crying "Frog!" in Portuguese and chasing after the poor creature, capturing it expertly and attempting to identify it.

It was just starting to get dark as we emerged from the wood into the village of Corvara. One quick warm shower later and we were sitting in a warm pizzeria.