Campanile Basso

So this was it, I had finally been persuaded into climbing something big, just quite how big I didn't realise until it was too late.

You see I don't know much about the high mountain routes, in fact I had never heard of the Campanile Basso in the Brenta Dolomites. Despite this myself, Andrea and Alberto arrived undiscovered at the start of the trail under the cover of rain. Despite having no thoughts of climbing the next day we went through the motions following the trail to the rifugio driven more by hunger than ambition, arriving just in time for a bowl of soup, much to the displeasure of the cannibals amongst us.

We met here the Pash (Richard, Lucy and her pop), the poet and some of his friends. Richard of course was hopeful for climbing the next day, we thought him mad.

However much to his delight, after an impossible night in the rifugio he was proved right. The day was clear and bright, just perfect for this climb we were about to do. We arrived at the base towards 10 and met another two parties on the climb. The tower looked big, but not that big, and not at all scary - ignorance can be a great thing. If however we had arrived from the other direction I think things would have felt very different. The route (the Fehrmann takes the tower first up a corner, and then a slab to arrive on a shoulder after 450m. Another route is then taken for 150m to scale the final tower.

Richard set off at speed taking Alberto with him. Richard has a speed and fluidity in the mountains not evident at the crag. Andrea and myself dropped woefully behind after a couple of wrong turns, heavy rucksacks and general incompetence. The poet passed below with his group of companions trailing behind on a via ferrata. After shouting up to us some unprintables (something about starting late, and not being high enough on the route) he disappeared as quickly as he arrived leaving us in solitude.

The corner provided the technically most difficult climbing, but the slabs at the top were the most exposed. A tricky traverse out of a cave would lead us to the security of the ledge. It was now getting late however, and without a guidebook we were none to certain what to do next. Although we had completed our route we didn't have time to go for the summit, and we did not know where the descent was, sometimes ignorance has a way of getting you back.

Fortunately we met Richard and Alberto descending with lunatic smiles stretching across their faces, they had reached the summit.

Circumnavigating the tower on a small ledge led us to the abseil rings, which after 4 or 5 impressive rope lengths deposited us on the poets via ferrata that we then followed back to the base of our route. Our descent provided us with fantastic views of the Campanile, now revealing its true height and exposure in the warm orange evening light. Our route seemed improbable.

The rifugio was reached at 10 pm, just in time to take a celebratory beer. Our final bottle of wine was also consumed to lighten our loads for the walk down, we had to return to Milan that night, which we did at 4.30am, exhausted. Richard and myself made it to work for 9, Alberto somewhat later, and Andrea not at all.