Wandering Around With a Rope

So normally, my partner and I choose a rock climb based on how difficult it is, its orientation (facing the sun or not) and various other things. I’ve never had to fit my brain into the psychology of the folks who climbed a route for the first time.

We did a Demetz/Glück route on the 4th Sella Tower today, in the Dolomites. Or we started a Demetz/Glück route, then we wound up…getting a bit lost. We finished the climb, or we finished a climb, but in the end I had no idea what we’d done. We definitely finished a route by Malsiner and Moroder. The one we started was first climbed by Ferdinand Glück and Matteo Demetz in 1929, and the Malsiner and Moroder route was first climbed in 1961.

It’s just hard to know what was going through Matteo’s and Ferdinand’s head (I feel like we can be on a first name basis after today) when they were climbing this route for the first time. Were they feeling lazy? Too many beers the night before? Were they dating the same girl and each tried to one-up the other with how hard they could climb? Or were they just out for a relaxing, fun day?

We just kept pulling a bit too much to the left and would up seeing a man climbing past us. He was on the route he wanted to be on, the Malsiner/Moroder, and showed us a way up and out at least.

Pretty much, we spent the day just wandering around with a ton of gear and a rope on the side of cliff, trying to figure out where we were. “The guide said there’d be a piton here, do you see a piton? Oh cool, here’s a belay stance (two old pitons and a worn bit of rope), I’ll stop here. Hey, there’s a sling here, fan-tastic, we must be on the right track…” until we weren’t anymore.

It’s just that everywhere was good, and everywhere went up more or less in the direction we wanted. We never got so off track that we found ourselves on horrible rock or somewhere dangerous, we were just…wandering around.

Nice enough day, good weather and we made it home safe and sound.