Sass de Roccia

Still not sleeping brilliantly and having all sorts of quite vivid dreams. I blame too much food, too late in the day. Must try to curb my snacking when we get back (she says with a large packet of crisps at her side!!).

Drove out through Corvara, the Campolongo Pass and Arabba this time, which made a very pleasant change from the Falzarego Pass. Down the valley from Arabba, we dropped down to the valley bottom and up the southerly side, to a dead end road up the hill from Laste. Parked up and walked about 200m up the hill to some large pinnacles of rock that have lots of bolted climbs on them, though all high grades, sadly.


Found the ‘gash’ in the rock, a very tall, narrow rift, that leads up to the start of the VF (1A) and headed off up the stemples.

At the top of the pinnacle we crossed a small bridge and continued up the wires to finally cross a second bridge across the main rift and reach the top of the crag.













It wasn’t very long or very difficult, but it was fun, which is more than can be said for yesterday’s effort. 


We had a poke around the hut at the top and wandered about the top, stepping over some very deep looking cracks in the rock, then we headed back down.

When we got to the bottom, we continued down the main gorge to the bottom where we found another set of stemples, with a very thin wire leading to the top of them and then... nothing. We re-traced our steps back up the steep slope and aborted, leaving by way of the initial gash in the rock. We then stopped and had lunch.

After that we started heading down to where the gorge comes out, but it got very steep and awkward, so we again retraced our steps and headed out along the side of the valley past where some people had been climbing earlier.

I then came over all knackered, so we decided to call it a day and headed back to Pedraces, with a stop in Corvara for coffee.

After the usual shower / rest, it got to 6:45 and Paul got hungry so we walked down into the village to see if anywhere was open to eat. There was no sign of the other four either, so we went back to Haus Valentin, jumped in Biscuit Tin and headed off up the road to La Villa, which was open. By chance, the pizzeria that we chose was the one that Boyd and co were at. He thought we’d recognised his yellow car, but it was pure fluke. My appalling lack of Italian was again highlighted when it came to ordering food and drink – it’s pretty embarrassing frankly, but a bit late to worry too much about it now! – but the food was good and it was the others who got a lecture from the waiter on how to say please and thank you – how embarrassing.

Back at the hotel, I went straight up to our room, but Paul went down and had a tea with the others. I think the beer was still run out.