On our last full day together, Eric, Owen, and I were all given the hall passes from our wives to get out together for a few hours during the afternoon. We decided to do the Sci Club 18 route just above town as quick as we could despite the Faloria cable car being closed for the season. I jogged from our house down the bike path and met them at the street heading up the hill toward the route where we met up and kept running uphill toward the route. At about 45 minutes from home, we reached the base of the route sweaty and out of breath. Just then, a few rain drops started falling on us and we debated if we should press on or bail. The forecast had suggested rain later on, so we chanced it.
The route is steep from the start, with fun movement that was made more fun when ignoring the cable and stemples for hands and feet. There were a few airy sections with big views of the nearby peaks which made the route pretty memorable. We stayed close enough to each other during the route that we could maintain a conversation throughout, which was really fun.
As we neared the top, we could see the Faloria cable car station above us. The last sections meandered quite a bit and took longer than I was expecting given how close it seemed we were to the top.
After a brief moment together at the end of the route, we packed up our gear and started jogging down. We quickly reached the “Cliffhanger Hut” with a sign saying “Stallone was here in 1993,” which was pretty cool. The descent was otherwise not so cool—mostly just a bunch of knee creaking without views, but it went pretty fast. I dropped the guys at their house and jogged back to mine, finishing a little over 3.5 hours later.
This was a nice, technical, and reasonably long route to be able to do straight from town without having to drive or take a cable car. Pretty unique!