Porte Neigre and the Tyrolean Traverse!

The south face of Porte Neigre was todays objective and the scene of another fantastic day of climbing in the Dolomites. If I could design a days climbing, it might look something like this - it's our very style of 'Alpine Style Climbing'. From the small village of Pera, we took a 'mountain taxi' up a long and winding road and got dropped in a wild looking valley, below the huge 600m vertical face of Cima Catinaccio, and Punta Emma.

Lunch below Punta Emma

We then hiked a little further uphill to the base of Porte Neigre, home to two fantastic climbs. We opted for the 'easier' of the two first and set off up..

Setting off...

The cliff was steep and the rock was solid, with some wildly exposed belays!

Hanging belays today!

Setting off up the 3rd pitch, high up on the arete

Topping out

At the top of the route after some great climbing, you find that you have actually ascended a pillar that is detached from the main cliff! To get back across to the mainland, you have to shimmy across an in-situ Tyrolean Traverse! It's not far across, but there is a decent drop below!

The route back to the main cliff!

After you!....

Don't look down!

Once across, we had a final pitch of climbing that led us up to the cross at the top of the cliff.

On the summit

Now here comes the best part! - Behind the cross at the cliff top is the 'Refugio Preuss' - a mountain hut that serves hot french fries and fine coffee to hungry climbers like us! Brilliant! And all served up amongst some of the finest mountain scenery you could ask for!

Ah yes! Another well placed hut at the top of the route!

After a relaxing lunch at the hut, we decided to walk around to the base of the cliff and do a pitch or two of the next route. This turned out to be considerably harder, with a slightly 'overhanging' theme to the main pitch! Setting off on the second pitch; leaving a nice big ledge, to traverse out into space required a bit of commitment, but despite the look of things, holds and bolts appeared just in the nick of time. I was pretty pumped by the time I reached the belay, but totally buzzing. Clare soon joined me and continued upwards. We decided not to climb the final pitch as it looked a little scrappy and from where we were, we could make a couple of big abseils back to the ground without too much hassle. Not wanting to miss the last taxi down to the valley, we chose to play it safe and head down.

The final 60m abseil.

Once back on terra firm, we made it back to the 'drop off' point to get the taxi back to the valley floor with half an hour to spare.

Heading home...

Then just to round things off, we celebrated our day by going straight for pizza and ice cream! What a day!

Porte Neigre:

- Via vuoto d'aria (5a) (4 pitches plus Tyrolean traverse)

- Via del Refugio (6a) (we did 3 pitches then abseiled down)