629 - Tre Cime
Tonight marked the final showdown with the clouds. Tre Cime.
Arguably the most popular mountain range in the world, and we’d saved this beauty for last. But it didn’t come without a couple nerves.
We eagerly awaited our sunset approach while munching on a couple hoagies near the base. Our entire morning had been plagued by fog, and now it was time to ascend into it.
The drive up was surprisingly long for a mountain that was so close in theory. The peaks were just in my photos moments ago- but now they felt like an eternity away. The mountains have a way of doing that.
Snippets of rock faded in and out view as we rose the ranks of the kingdom. Suddenly a monsterous cliff towered above us, then disappeared into the abyss, never to be seen again.
A dirt parking lot came into view, which signaled our arrival. Our car came to a rolling stop, and an eerie silence fell upon us.
We stepped out of the car and looked around. Most of the traffic for the day had already left. Sunset was never going to be a thing. With this thick fog, there was nothing left for tourists.
I pulled my camera bag over my shoulder and we began our march. The hike started off slow, but escalated in intensity as we went on. What started as a molten fog turned into a misty rain. And what continued as a misty rain, transformed into a full on downpour.
It was a trade-off. With the rain came larger pockets of clearing, but also an ever-more-apparent feeling of wetness.
After a gnarly ascent to the clearing of a pass, our spirits were approaching their limit. The rain was getting bad- and we’d been hiking for nearly an hour to no avail. The problem was that the fog never quite seemed to lift high enough to see anything higher than the bottom half of Tre Cime, despite a near constant teasing.
We decided to call it. The full six and a half mile loop wasn’t in the cards, especially with the growing severity of the rain. Luckily, Refugio Auronzo awaited us at the bottom. We begrudgingly pushed open the door and ordered a hot chocolate to drown our woes before the final 30 minutes back.
No views for tonight.
Eventually we left the Refugio, but when we stepped outside, something felt different. I looked downhill and a massive clearing in the fog was blowing in. Massive. As in, a football field or two’s worth of gap. And I had maybe ten minutes to make it back to the top of the pass to see the infamous view we missed.
I dropped everything and started running. Alara has a video somewhere of me scaling the pass we just climbed down at a full sprint to make it to the top before the clearing blew in. Like an ant ascending a mountain.
At that elevation, my lungs felt like they had shards of glass blowing into them from the cold, and the slippery dirt threatened to take my balance at any moment. The view, or what was left of it, was seemingly worth it:
I walked back down to the Refugio, excited about my brief but subtle victory. I’ll take it.
But the real treat came when I turned around at the base, and the entire landscape was revealed to us. A view in totality:
“Lil’ House on the Prairie”
Taken with Sony a7rIV + Sony 24-105mm f/4 G
[ISO 100 ~ 39mm ~ f/4 ~ 1/400s]
We’d won.
