Thursday, July 19
(...continued from previous page)
There was another person who arrived at the top about the same time we
did - a young man who introduced himself as Giulio. He was a worker at a
nearby rifugio to the west, and had a few days off, so he decided to
come spend it in the Pale.
Giulio was planning to bivouac out in the open
on La Rosetta's summit, and was a little concerned that the folks at the
nearby rifugio Rosetta (where we were staying) might find out and make
him move on (apparently this kind of open bivuoacing is not allowed).
We told him that mum was the word....
After a fine sunset, we leisurely headed back to the rifugio, watching
the blue dusk of twilight slowly descend over the altopiano.
In the distance, directly behind the rifugio, we could see the prominent
outline of the Civetta, one of the major peaks in the dolomites, and the
probable objective of our next ferrata outing. Daryl took the
opportunity of good cellphone reception to call back home and talk to
Helen, his expectant wife.
Bright light shone out of the windows of the main dining room in the
rifugio - a dining room full of boisterous kids enjoying a night at
'camp', Italian-style. We headed up to our rooms, feeling tired and
fulfilled from our long day. The rifugio was overflowing from the
large class of kids that had invaded. In fact, they had even set up
temporary cots in the hallways.
The thumping, giggling and running continued on, unabated. Every so
often, a class attendent (or rifugio employee - I couldn't be sure)
would come upstairs and give the italian equivalent of a loud 'sush',
which had a lasting effect of about 45 seconds. We wondered if there
was any sort of real curfew to get these guys to quiet down.
Shortly after 10pm, though, there was a pretty successful imposition of
the start of quiet hours, and I was impressed with how quickly
everything quieted down. In the end, it was no trouble at all to fall
into a deep, restful sleep.
Below is the interactive trackmap, elevation profiles, and climb / hike data for the full two days of our climb in the Pale (even though you haven't read the day 2 description yet, which is on the next page).