Colin and I got the nod from our wives to take the afternoon together starting around our kiddo nap times, so we rendezvoused in Cortina at about 12:30pm, drove up to the Rio Gere chairlift, and hopped on as quickly as we could, bound for the Marino Bianchi route up Cristallo Mezzo. Upon reaching the top of the lift at 1:30pm, we saw a sign suggesting that it would keep running later than we’d thought—until 5pm. Was 3.5 hours enough time to do the scree gully ascent, route out and back, and descent? We weren’t sure but we decided to try.
After a brief descent from the lift and around the rifugio, we began the gully. It wasn’t so bad at first but eventually steepened and loosened enough that there were some moments of cursing. Nevertheless, my fitness felt really good and I was motivated to make that last chair down, so I blitzed up the ~2,300 ft gully in 45 minutes.
We geared up at the old, defunct rifugio and set off up the route from there at about 2:45pm. It was pretty mellow and meandering for the most part, punctuated by some steeper steps and ladders here and there. At 3:30pm, we finished the last little traverse to the summit. It was awesome to get this different vantage point from above Cortina having now been on many of the other peaks in the area. What a grand amphitheater of Dolomitic limestone!
Since it had taken us 2 hours to get here and we only had 1.5 hours to make it back to the lift, we decided to enjoy the views for a few minutes rather than immediately turning around. After getting our fill, we started down at 3:40pm, expecting to miss the lift and walk to the car. We enjoyed facing outwards on much of the descent, taking in the scenery and watching parties across the way walking across the Cliffhanger Bridge near the start of the Ivano Dibona. We were back at the saddle by 4:15pm and quickly removed our alpine diapers.
It turned out that the scree was perfect for surfing down and we were able to really open it up on the descent. We began to believe we could make it to the chairlift by 5pm and kept charging. At 4:50pm, we nodded to the chairlift operator as we loaded up to float back down to the car. Magic.
While it felt a bit rushed throughout, it was a great way to spend an afternoon with a good friend in the mountains. If we’d had more time, I would have liked to have added the first section of the Ivano Dibona to amortize the scree gully effort.