Sci Club 18 Via Ferrata

July 11, 2025

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!

Punta Anna and Tofana di Mezzo Via Ferrata

July 10, 2025

As one of the towering peaks making Cortina d’Ampezzo feel like a mountain amphitheater, Tofana di Mezzo is a natural objective. A casual cable car descent and a long via ferrata route to the top make it even more enticing. With one full day to get out together sans kiddos, Eric, Owen, and I quickly chose it as our objective.

We parked at Piè Tofana and took one of the first chairlifts that morning at about 8:45am up to Duca d’Aosta. With the next chairlift section closed, we hiked up the steep gravel road to the Pomedes Hut, where we stopped for a brief moment to take in the views. We could see a bunch of other parties heading for the route and assumed it would be a day spent enjoying the route more than pushing the pace.

The route starts out with fun moves right away and maintains a surprising ratio of actual climbing and scrambling to walking throughout. The more we ignored the cable and stemples for our hands and feet, the more fun we had.

We gained the summit at 1:15pm and took in the views before hiking down to the cable car. We rode down to the Ra Valles midstation and stopped for lunch with views here before descending to Col Druscié and hiking a brief ways over to our car at Piè Tofana, making it back in time to relieve our babysitters!

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.