Wednesday 22 August 2018

Summer 2018: Dolomites: day 4: Agostini to valley

Previously: arrival and day 1: Graffer to Tuckett; day 2: Tuckett to Brentei; day 3: Brentei to Agostini.

Wednesday 22nd: day 4: Agostini to valley


GPS track.

Sleep well, woken by E telling me my alarm will go off in 30 seconds, which it does. Over breakfast, discover from pix on the walls that the huge blocks above the hut are from a tower that fell in 1957; and that the new roof dates from a very heavy snowfall in 2013/14. Pink morning with cap of cloud on a lower hill.

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We're heading for the Bocca due Denti. Off 8:15 in sunshine that slowly fades to light cloud. We grind up the #321.

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Befre we leave, a quick group portrait, perhaps the only one I have of all four of us from the trip. D, try to look happier.

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Near the start of the ladders, we saw parties to the left doing real climbing. Pix: distant, and closer. It was all very hard work:

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Near the top there is some weird grotto-like stuff, which was fun at the time but is in retrospect not terribly photogenic. An odd soft-looking contrast to all the sharp limestone. At the top we're out of the mist, and have a wide view down.

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A closer view, including the distant mast, which is Doss del Sabion, which is one way to get down from, but instead we chose to walk.

The descent is sort of over a series of shattered shelves / ledges in a scree-filled ex glacial basin. Looking back, you can see the "two teeth". And so to the hut, 11:15.

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Due to what I shall charitably regard as some misunderstanding about boots, I ended up sitting outside and Miriam brought me out a coffee. I go for a look at the chapel - every Italian hut has a chapel - which is carved into the rock, clearly visible from the hut.

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After that, one last look back at the weird rock in the mist,

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and we head back down towards greenery and sunshine once more.

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Here's a view back, from around about Val Nardis:

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D continues to look elegant when resting - but I've used up my quota of pix of him - and E doesn't quite cut it. That's the last of the pix: after that we go down and around Lago di val d'Agola and come to the head of the road, which we evade on the path for a few lacets. Then it absolutely pours with rain for perhaps an hour as we march stolidly down the valley, finding no shelter at all. At last, as the rain peters out, we come to a chalet-hotel-guest-house and nearly stop for tea, but she doesn't really do for non-guests, but tells us the cable-car is just down the road, so we go on to that. The cable is on the map, but not the stop; we get a quick lift (2E each) up all the way to Madonna. There's then some comedy as we struggle to escape the Giant Echoing Multi-Level Ski-Station-Cum-Car-Park which is really designed for winter. Once out, we find a decent cafe not far off and plot our next move.

Once we're feeling drier and warmer I leave my sac and march purposefully up through town to get the car, which takes half an hour or so and I arrive in plenty of time, though I was worrying I'd be late. By the time I drive back down, M has found us a hotel and... all is well.





Stoat

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