Via Ferrata Michielli Strobel

July 9, 2025

It was really special to have good friends and their young kids join us for a week during the period of our parental leave trip in Cortina d’Ampezzo. We planned ahead and arranged babysitters for a full day to enable all of the adults to get outside together once. We wanted to do a via ferrata with some real climbing to it but not so committing or long that we’d be pushing our luck with our babysitter window, so the Michielli Strobel sifted to the top of the list.

We met up at the parking lot and started hiking at about 9:15am. It’s a bit of a grunt up to the start of the cable but it went quickly chatting with each other. We were clipped in and moving up the rock just after 10am. The guidebook described the route as being disjointed and we soon came to understand why—it had nice sections of climbing, punctuated by traverses and lower-angle trails connecting them. But there was enough steeper climbing and it was long enough overall to be engaging and fun.

We topped out at noon after stopping along the way at a nice viewpoint for lunch. The initial descent and high traverse to the saddle was enjoyable and then the scree gully was not. It wasn’t quite consistent enough to scree ski and so it felt reasonably painstaking even with poles. But it went and we eventually reached the lower trails that circled back to our starting point.

With enough time, we drove a bit up the road to have lunch at Ristorante Rifugio Ospitale, which was quite delightful and served a stellar pappardelle deer ragù. We enjoyed a few moments of calm with no children before heading back into the fray in Cortina.

Tridentina al Pisciadù Via Ferrata

July 3, 2025

After some searching for top via ferrata routes near Ortisei, the Tridentina al Pisciadù quickly surfaced as a relatively accessible, technical, and fun route to take on. Logistics during our parental leave trip were a bit tricky to juggle two young kiddos, so my wife and I hatched a plan where, on our travel day from Ortisei to Cortina, after getting the car packed and ready, I’d take a bus to the trailhead, do the route, and get picked up by her on the way. This required me to make sure I was done and ready to roll at about 2pm and it also set my starting time with the only direct bus reaching the trailhead at about 9am. Game on.

I jogged the access trail to the first section, quickly ascending this reasonably steep initial ramp. From here, I ran the trail to the base of the proper route, passing a number of parties on their way. I had a moment of confusion when I reached the wall given that the guidebook said the route started just left of the waterfall, but that beta was wrong and sent me down a short, loose gully for a moment before I realized my error. Back on the main route, I had a lot of fun moving fast with relatively few parties ahead of me for a good ways.

After cresting this long middle section, I came up on a guided party who let me pass but then hit a big traffic jam of parties going up the final, steepest section. It didn’t make sense to try to pass, so I just settled in and chatted up a family from Colorado who were climbing with their three teenagers—pretty cool! This steep section was some of the more sustained and technical via ferrata climbing I’d done but the existence of the cable and stemples made it feel very casual.

At the bridge marking the end of the route and spanning a really cool sharp chasm, I checked the time at 10:40am, which seemed like I should be able to press on to the Cima Pisciadù and still make it back to the trailhead by 2pm. I jogged up to the hut and then up the trail to the high pass. I’d been expecting a bit more via ferrata to the summit but only found 3rd class scrambling—perhaps I missed the more technical option. It was reasonably fun regardless and I was on the top just shy of 11:30am.

The descent was pretty straightforward, with only a moment of pause when I ran into a sign suggesting that the standard descent route was closed, but there were parties ascending it who had made it from the bottom, so I was confident enough to head down. After a lot of loose descending and increasingly tired knees, I made it back to the trailhead at 1pm—enough time to lay down in the grass and have a snack before my wife drove by and picked me up. Really fun route and great feeling to move so fast on technical terrain in the gorgeous Dolomites!

Sass Rigais Via Ferrata

June 28, 2025

During our first trip to the Dolomites, my wife and I hiked from Seceda to Resciesa via Forcella di Mesdi. We could see from the col that a via ferrata route went up to the summit of Sass Rigais, one of the highest points above the town of Ortisei where we were staying. I wanted to just do it as a scramble that day without any gear but thought better of it. It was high on my to-do list as we came back through Ortisei a few years later on our parental leave trip.

I took one of the first bins up to Seceda, chatting up an Australian couple most of the way. Right at 9am, I started jogging down and across the high traverse from Seceda toward the basin below Sass Rigais. I was moving pretty fast. Too fast, it turned out. In only 25 minutes, I ran right by the right trail, thinking it couldn’t possibly be this soon. There was a relatively high-looking peak to my left and it seemed correct to curl around and head up a well-established trail into the drainage that was ahead of me. I was pushing myself to go fast uphill and didn’t look at my topo map. Whoops. It wasn’t until I was at the high pass near Odla de Valdusa nearly 2,000 vertical feet up that I realized I’d made a big mistake.

I launched myself back down the trail and hooked into the correct approach, now worried I’d be stuck behind a bunch of parties on a nice Saturday. Thankfully, I was able to pass all of the bigger groups and arrived at the base of the East route alone with nobody close ahead of me. The route was quite short and straightforward and I reached the summit at noon. I soaked in the views for a few minutes and then charged down the Southwest route. This proved to be quite a bit longer than the way up, but generally pretty mellow. I wasn’t sure that what looked like a shortcut along the way down to the left would go, so I stuck with the main route all the way to Forcella di Mesdi. From here, it was just a quick descent and then a jog back across to Seceda. I decided to finish by going up to the high point at the end of the traverse to take in the classic view of the Odles before reaching Seceda just after 2pm.

This was a gorgeous area and fun route, though I found myself wishing it were longer and a bit more consistently technical. The bonus mileage and vertical made it feel like a more worthy day even if it was a complete mistake.