Poor Me!!!!!!!!

Oh dear, oh dear. I should not have tempted fate. Now have a real lowlight to share.

We spent the last three days in the Dolomites. It’s a bit of a mission to get there, since the roads are small and windy and the busses and trains are slow. It is, however, well worth the effort. We had booked ourselves into the Lagazuoi refugi for the first two nights but missed out on the first night due to train issues. Basically, we missed our stop. When I noticed that we had just chuffed right out of the station we were supposed to change at, we made a mad scramble to be ready for the next stop. We had our packs at the ready and waited at the carriage doors so that we could get out and retrace our footsteps. The train stopped and we opened the doors. Only they refused to open. We wrestled and tugged to no avail. The train chuffed off again. By this stage we were highly agitated. We migrated up another carriage and managed to alight at the next station, only to find we had a half hour wait for the opposite train. We ate a somewhat grumpy lunch of bread and ham and eventually managed to train back to the original missed station. We lost an hour. Another train trip and a bus journey later, we found ourselves at Cortina. It’s a pretty town – very Swiss. Wooden chalets with geraniums in window boxes, mountain slopes studded with pine trees and ski runs and ski lifts and massive rock faces as far as the eye can see. That is not an exaggeration, the mountains are all around and you can’t see through them. Cortina hosted the Winter Olympics a number of years ago. It even has a ski jump. At the bus station we discovered that while we were in time to catch the last bus to Passa Falzarego, we were too late to catch the last cable car up to the refugi. And there was no ways we were about to hike up a mountain in the drizzle, with nigh on 50kg of luggage between us. So we found ourselves a campsite and pitched our tent. The next day we left most of our stuff in the tent and then set off for Passa Falzarego carrying minimal burdens. The bus trip was quick and the cable car ride was great. We whizzed up the mountain. The view from the Lagazuoi refugi is spectacular. Mountains and mountains and mountains. It’s a good thing that the view is spectacular, because so are the prices. It cost me 43 Euros for one night in a dormitory (shared with seven others, one of whom was a terrible snorer) and supper and breakfast. Plus some gluhwein and wine and I hit the 50 Euro mark. Close on R600 for the night’s lodging. AND!!!!! I was incensed to discover that the showers were pay showers. Sod it, I thought, I will just remain grubby and smelly. Let them wash their sheets extra!

Fortified by a helping of apple strudel (late brekkies) I set forth with N to challenge the Tomaselli via ferrata. This one is much harder than either of the previous two I had done – graded 5 with a seriousness of C.

Via Ferrata Tomaselli - up that massive looking mountain behind N:

At first it was cold. I wore my down jacket. Patches of dirty (old) snow lay about and there was no sun. Just clouds and mist. We got to the start of the route and set off in the mist. The route was a bit slippery due to the recent rains, but it wasn’t unmanageable. In fact it was a lot of fun. 

Me having fun:

Me having loads of fun:

N rounding a corner:

It was a lot of fun right up to the halfway mark, when the rain started to come down. It poured down. The route became a water chute. A slippery, glassy water chute. And the rain was so cold. My hands started to freeze. Although this sounds unpleasant, I think it was a blessing, because it meant that they were so cold that I couldn’t feel how sore they were. Slippery rock, freezing fingers, imminent hypothermia, sodden to the skin, not a dry patch on me anywhere. Unhappy in the extreme, I was. And there was not a damned thing to do except carry on. We were past the escape route section and there was not a sausage of a chance that I was down-climbing that route. No way. Up was scary enough. Down would have been wicked injury potential. So on I soldiered, teeth chattering and sphincter tightly clenched. You can only imagine how thrilled I was to reach the summit which, thank the gods, we did. As we unclipped our final clip the rain stopped. Giving the Universe the finger, we commenced the descent. The descent was also slippery but thankfully it was a much shorter section of cable. Once we reached the end of the descent cable the sun came out in earnest and shone prettily for us, showing us the glorious landscape we had climbed through in driving rain. We ate lunch (bread and a Mars Bar) and then walked the long path back to the refugi in the sun, with patches of snow all about. Strange indeed for a South African gal. Even though the sun was weak, I still managed to get a healthy dose of sunburn. We didn’t think to bring the sunscreen when we set off in the middle of a cloud. 

On returning to the refugi I celebrated with a glass of steaming gluhwein. By that stage the rain was back and it was bitingly cold again. It was a delicious feeling to look out at the clouds and the rain and the mist swirling about the mountains while supping on my gluhwein. Definitely worth the hefty price tag. The next morning we eschewed the cable car despite the rain and headed off to descend via the next via ferrata . This isn’t quite as hard core as it sounds, because this one is really just a walk in a tunnel. No need for any via ferrata gear, just a torch. These tunnels are the WW1 tunnels that the Italians occupied. The Austrians occupied another set of tunnels a short distance away and they spent the years of the Great War (as it is called in the region) shooting at each other and trying to mine underneath each others’ tunnels and dynamite each other into oblivion. It is hard to imagine just how unpleasant life must have been for those soldiers, living underneath rock with winter temperatures reaching to minus 25. It’s a very special experience to do this walk. And we were lucky we set off so early and in the rain because it meant we had the place entirely to ourselves. N and I actually lost each other somewhere near the beginning and did the walk largely on our own. A couple of times I turned off my torch and stood in the pitch black and the silence, imagining what it must have felt like to be there so many years ago in the icy cold and the damp, with a group of people hell bent on killing you just around the corner. 

Hut/cave where the Italian soldiers slept:

N pretending to be an Austrian officer outside his hut:

Italian Tunnels:

The tunnels end halfway down the mountain and the rest of the way is a large, well worn track that you can descend pretty quickly. We passed droves of people walking up to do the tunnels from the bottom up and I was once again glad that we started our day so early. I don’t think the tunnels would have been nearly so atmospheric filled with torches and chatter and laughter. 

Me entering a section of the Italian tunnels armed with trusty headtorch, down jacket and Climb Like A Girl buff:

Filled with the sheer delight of the day, the splendour of the mountains and the heady intoxication of overcoming physical challenges in yesterday’s epic battle with the elements, I bolted down a section of the path to get a picture of the descending cable car. The road (because that is what it was by this stage of the descent) was wide, dusty and gravel/rock strewn. My heady intoxication and delight vanished in a puff of road dust as my ankle turned over and I ploughed two deep furrows into the road with my knees. And two smaller ones with my hands. As I fell, I could feel my ankle giving way with an extremely undelightful sear of pain. N caught up with me and asked “Are you alright?”
No. I was not. The knees of my climbing pants were gone, ripped to bit by the rocks, as were my knees. Blood speckled the remaining bits of the pants. My hands were ok, just bruised, but my ankle was nasty. It’s a very nasty sprain, probably better described as a low grade torn ligament. I mean ligaments. I did more than one.

Me looking and feeling truly pathetic:

As I type this, with my poor ankle elevated on some blankets, the outside ankle bone looks like someone has put half a tennis ball in there. The inside ankle bone is not as bad as the outer one, but it still looks fat and puffy and horrible. Even the tendon that runs down the front of my shin bone has swollen up. And the bruising is starting quietly. In a couple of days I will be a real sight. The climbing pants have been retired. As it was they were developing a need to be patched on the butt and I figured that after the fall, there was more hole than pants. And I don’t think I will be needing climbing pants for a while….

My poor deformed ankle:

I haven’t gone to the doctor yet. I’ll see if I need to in a day or so. I’ve now had so much experience with torn ligaments that I don’t think there’s much that the doctors will be able to tell me that I am not already doing. I can still walk, as long I don’t do any sideways or stabilizing movements. I’ve thrown out some stuff to lighten my pack. N is now carrying the quickdraws as well as the rope and tent. I can manage the lighter pack if I walk very slowly and carefully and not too far. In a very depressive moment yesterday I found myself pondering that this might be the end of my Europe trip. Hopefully that will not prove to be the case. I am self medicating with anti-inflammatories (the same ones that were prescribed to me for my last little accident) and trying to keep the poor ankle elevated. At last an excuse to be able to put my feet on the furniture! I am bandaging it for support it and fending off N’s desperate pleas to be allowed to sticky tape it instead of bandaging. He finally got to spray me with merthiolate and is now pestering me fairly consistently “Don’t you think you need more merthiolate on your knees? You know – they need to be disinfected…” He just likes to spray the red stuff on me. I look like a ten year old with skinned knees.

My poor skinned knees:

We had to travel to Venice today. Fortunately this involved minimal walking. I don’t think I will be seeing quite as much of the city as I had hoped, though. That’s the end of the saga for the moment. Wish me well and hope that I won’t be seeing you prematurely back in SA.

I look like I have elephantitis: