Dolomiti di Brenta
A vertical feast on the beautiful walls of the Brenta.
With Philippe, Boris & Yohan.
Second week of the final guide course: we hit the road for the Brenta Dolomites! This area is a little out of the way, lying apart to the west of the rest of the Dolomites. We are welcomed by weather that is wet, to say the least, so we bide our time...
After a short climb to the Brentei hut, we spend the afternoon weaving between the seeps to find some dry rock. It's our first contact with the famous dolomite, the "endemic" limestone of the Dolomites. Indeed, this famous sedimentary rock is different here from that of our Prealps crags: harder and very stratified.
At last the clouds tear open and give us a glimpse of very high walls whose summits we can't even see. We then grasp the full scale of these Dolomite faces. The smallest bit of rock here is 500m high, while the biggest exceed a kilometre.
What excitement facing this vertical infinity, where the scale of the walls is multiplied by the complexity of their innards: here a pillar, there a hidden facet, and yet more pillars. At every scale, the dolomite has sculpted an incredible wealth of shapes.
The weather has set fair and we finally embark on beautiful climbs on some of these impressive walls. The climbing is steep and the routes often direct, so there's no beating about the bush: we go straight at the wall! It's always surprising to see the rope dangling in thin air on grade V+. The rock is always rich in holds, which lets you let loose in beautiful vertical flights.
We start with the 700 or so metres of the Punta di Campiglio via the Via degli Aspiranti Guide Alpine, then the Via delle Tre Generazioni.
On the Crozzon di Brenta, we climb the beautiful, classic Via delle Guide, opened by the famous Bruno Detassis in 1935. 800m of clever, consistent climbing at grade V. What a joy to be able to move quickly up such steep terrain: pure dolo-mythical climbing. From the summit of the Crozzon, we reach the Cima Tosa along a very exposed ridge where sure-footedness and concentration are essential...
The next day we climb the beautiful Campanile Basso via the Fehrmann corner, then the Preuss route. A thought for the latter, who opened this route entirely free solo and climbed back down it the same way. A demanding ethic, but not a lasting one: Paul Preuss fell to his death at 27.
We couldn't leave the Dolomites without doing one of its famous via ferratas. So we end our stay with the Via delle Bocchette Centrali up to the start of a last short climbing route on the Cima Molveno: the Via Felicetti. Quickly dispatched, we finally return to the heat of the valley and the long hours on the road that bring us back to Chamonix late in the evening.
A great trip in the Brenta!
Photo gallery...