Utah-Italy 2001 (7)

I have some good stories.. so many in fact that I'm screwed cause I only have 15 minutes left before this place closes for the day and I just want to get it all in... I have to write so often or I'll forget the details and thanks to these letters, I don't have to write so much in my journal...This is my journal... and you are my parchment! (isn't that the word?)

Let's see. Well, on a personal note, I noticed in the shower the other day that after all this hiking I've been doing, Baby Got Back is no longer my theme song! yay.. I know, disappointing for some.. you can't sing and dance on my bootie anymore - Bambi. Ha ha!! Just kidding! That was high school right.. and it was Sarah that liked to shake her booty with me.. at the Magic Attic!! Whew! What a crack! Speaking of hiking. Here's a song that comes to mind.. 'Ain't nooo stoppin' me noooow' That's all I know.

I used to peruse the guide book and talk options with Susan and Tim and think, oh mamamia, hour and a half approach.. Of course, I'd play tough and keep that to myself.. now I say, bring it on. Let's do it. Oh, is that all... Why not 2 hours, 3 hours... Come on baby! So, all those trail blazers that used to leave me in the dust, watch out. It still hurts though, just not as badly.

Ok' here's a story. Yesterday, Tim and I ...well, let's start a day earlier. Thursday night, Tim and I have a plan.... Punta Fiames...15 pitches... fairly easy climbing up this knife edge arete that overlooks Cortina and faces South. The approach is an hour and a half (yeah!) and the climbing is supposed to be classic. So the pack is loaded, the food for munching on the summit and the halfway ledge is packed, we have our water, we have our enthusiasm...and ten minutes later as the kids are going to bed, we also have RAIN!! Damn it!! But, the plan is still in place, exept this time, we'll get up at 5:30, check the weather and then decide... Denied. Until later. We get up at 8am, eat a casual breakfast with the daily coffee dosage and then decide to punch it! We reach the trail head at 9:08... start marching.. The guide says to leave the main trail just as it leaves the forest and head up and right toward the route... Just as it leaves the forest, right? Not just before it leaves the forest... Well, hello Tim!! Boyz. I swear. When they think they are right, there ain't no changin' that mind.. It went from being probably the right way to definitely the right way! So, I bit my tongue and followed. His choice of trail took us through some major bushes, in humid, post-rain conditions that left our pants wetter than if we had been caught in a rain storm. I was sweating so bad that I tied a shirt around my head. I looked just like a GI Joe figure, only I had two 70m ropes strapped to my back. I figured while I was at it, ya know, playing combat-the-juniper-tree, I better be prepared.. so I took my index, middle and ring finger on each hand, dug them into the ground and pulled three stripes of dirt across my cheeks. Now I was ready for anything that would possibly sneak attack me, like that 8 legger just ahead... Thank god I'm not aracnaphobic cause I walked through ten or so webs with spiders lingering dead center.. Their webs now exist in my armpits at this point. My pants and shirt became filled with pine'ish needles from the Juniper-like tree that I was battling on my upward journey toward the route.. all the while thinking to myself..'If only he had listened to me.. if we had only gone twenty more feet on the main trail..' Well, at approximately 10am we bumped into the main trail and had another 40ish minutes to the base of the route...which was a luxurious 1500 feet off the deck. The route's an odd one in that way. You start at this wonderfully exposed height with still 15 pitches and loads of meters to gain. Well, just barely up the first pitch and what should fall upon our little helmets... RAIN!! Claro que si!! We kept motoring, knowing we would probably be screwed but not having much of a choice. The first 6 pitches wander through some marge rock, with lots of loosies and little gear. Most of the belays were half ass, slinging boulders and stuff, so evacuation was not an option. Finally, on the 7th pitch, we get a good solid glue in anchor, resembling what other routes had to rappell from, but the rock just got great!! No turning back.. The rain had subsided so we just kept going up... Mind you, the clouds were still looming and looking ominous in the west...which, I must mention now, is where most of the storms have been coming from so far... make a mental note of that detail for later! :) So, 10 pitches up the route and the clouds from the west are beginning to leak on our heads. Then they begin to vomit all over us. Tim is half way up a pitch and SisterLightning joins the party with her bro, Thunder.. Since the next belay is on top of a huge pillar, we decide Tim should wait right where he is until the heat passes. So, I sit in a small ball on the belay ledge below, hiding in my rain coat and holding onto the rope so tightly, for some sense of relief. Tim is meanwhile clipped into a piton and crunched into a ball about 50 feet above me on a small exposed ledge. The rain turns to that heavier stuff before snow and after sleet.. Then it subsides. So, he finishes the pitch on wet run-out rock and I run up behind him. Our company on this climb are two French dudes that were supposed to go left a couple of pitches ago to do an easier line, and now they lie in our hands, following us pitch for pitch to the top, less prepared for the rain than us too!

Well, let me put you in some similar shoes for a second... Imagine you've been hiking for hours and you're just butt tired and can barely move your legs anymore, then all of a sudden your most feared enemy comes out of nowhere and starts chasing you...Suddenly, you can run faster than ever in your life.. What is that? Adrenaline, right? Well, on this climb, we weren't quite that wasted, but we are cold, wet, hungry and a little tired... Then, the monster showed its ugly face. More HUGE than I can even describe in words, the darkest blue I've seen(outside of a Crayola box) and so full of fury I almost peed my pants! It was a torrential sky monster, a storm with the potential to kill us with one breath of its fire! And it was racing in from the SOUTH!! What the hell. As we looked down on Cortina from the route, it became engulfed in this maddness. Tim's eyes popped right out of his head, like the truck driver in Pee Wee's Big Adventure... I swear! My eyes just filled with tears, not really. :) But man, did that fire get lit under our tails and we set off running. Of course at this point the pitches are at their hardest and Tim took over, leading like a madman, racing up every pitch, me in tow with the pack on my back.. We would barely talk at the belays, just clip in and go, go, go!! It was pure insanity, but we were being safe. The storm held off but it was ever-present... 85 meters to go and the lightning is decorating the sky for a celebration of some great victory of the stars. The thunder was loud as hell and lasted for seconds at a time. 40 meters to go and we were starting to smile again.... Then I hear a glorious YEEHAW echo down the gully by my side and I know the summit is just waiting for me! We made it! We got all the metal right off our bodies, shoved the packs with gear and our mouths with chocolate.. I scribbled some illegible nonsense in the summit registry to prove our slight presence and then we booked it down the trail, leaving the French in our dust...they were safe. So, we skipped along the trail, taking our time and rejoicing that on such a marginal day, we stole a great climb from the weather gods!! Against all odds. That storm just sat back and laughed as we climbed so fast.... so fast that I don't even really remember much other than pulling on holds that were shaking under my grip and on any other day would have come right out and sent me flying!

The trail down was another historical journey throughthe old barracks of Austrian War dudes...their stone walls barely in tact, but present enough to remind us of the hell they went through as they sat in the snow guarding their piece of Italy from a very defendable spot in the hills, unfortunately, they didn't plan well to get their provisions and while they starved in the mountains, 8 Italians took over Cortina and stuffed themselves with all the bread in the area.. comphy and warm. On the way down, I was so thrilled, I started to think back on the climb and sang along with John and Olivia to this tune...'I got chills, they're multiplyin'....ANd I'm loooosin' controool, cause the power that you're supplyin' is eLECtrifyin'...Better shape up, up,up...etc..... Home dry, mostly and safe! And within a half hour of reaching the car, we got dumped on like no other...sorry, our tents did. We were all cozily taking refuge in a Pizzeria, looking out as the thin crust of famous Italian pizzas left this world!!

Today, Susan and I were meant to take on some brute wall, but the weather sucked and we figured those weather gods would only be so kind, so we went sport climbing close to camp. The ratings were sandbagged and we found ourselves feeling very inadequate for sport climbing, which is a bummer for me considering that the rest of my trip in Europe will be mostly focused around sport climbing. My game plan right now is to head up to Northern Italy for some climbing in Finale... Then over to the south of France to climb inthe Verdon Gorge, Beaux and Ceuse. Weather permitting on all accounts. Then, on October 1st?? I'm still planning to meet Doug H. for some more sport climbing in Sardinia. Then, it's off to the east coast of the Carolinas again. Spain is still in there somewhere, but I want quality not quantity so I'm not going to rush from country to country... Well, I have more juice, but we'll let that suffice for now. Our very blessed time here in Cortina is coming to an end on Wednesday when the Wolfe's and I head to Florence for a few days of sight seeing...then they go their way and I, mine. I'll have to wake up via alarm clock instead of my already made coffee at 5am (by Tim) and the screaming kids at 8am on my babysitting days (3 siblings in one tent.. ouch... get'em dressed, get 'em out!) love and kisses and monster energy to you all!!