Nice day for a bit of Via Ferrata action again today, but with some serious guidebook inaccuracies! Some of which worked in our favour though!
All psyched up for the hour up hill hike, we arrived at the top of the Gardena Pass to find that a new chairlift had been built since publication! And from what we could make out, it would take us straight up to the base of our route! At €3.50 for a ride, it seemed rude not to! Bonus!
A gentle, bearly sweat inducing hike, then saw us gearing up ready for the climb above. Here's the road we should have been trudging up in the afternoon sun!
After witnessing some bizzare/comedy/terrifying rope work from a small group, we got safely ahead of them and clipped onto the wire. A handy ladder got us off to a good start!
The guidebook said 1-2 hours should be sufficient to get to the summit of our peak (Piz da Cir V).
So off we went...
And fifteen minutes later, found ourselves on the small summit, (along with about ten others!) feeling slightly cheated!
Another fifteen minutes and we were off the ridge and away from the shinannigans of the novice via ferrata teams around the summit. As we now had plenty of spare time, we traversed the hillside and climbed the highest peak on the ridge called Gran Cir. This gave a much more satisfying ascent. For a start, we had the summit to ourselves. It's much easier than the previous peak and has a few sections of cable, some of which we clipped into.
The views however, were spectacular. We sat for ages, trying to take it all in and spot peaks that we'd climbed. In the distance, rain was coming and we could hear a few rumbles heading our way.
We got back to the chairlift station, just as the heavens opened and took shelter from the rain in a particularly fine cafe.
In the time it took to consume a couple of coffees and a portion of strudel, the storm had passed over head and we walked the final twenty minutes back to the van without needed waterproofs (lucky, as we weren't carrying them anyway!).
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