Cablecar Enchainement

Tuesday 25 June 2013 Colfosco; Cablecar Enchainment

It remains snowy and cold so we take a bus ride up the Campolongo Pass noting the British double decker Bus stationed seemingly permanently at the top of the pass. I took a series of iPhone pictures, as we went up the Campolongo, the Pordoi, and the cable car rides themselves. My phone being an old version of iphone is probably the closet and most conveniently portable thing you can get to using a pinhole camera so produces wonderfully simplified and direct images, guessing at exposure and having a wide field of vision.

Jim at Vallon, with Franz Kostner Refuge in the Background

The Franz Kostner Refuge, Vallon, Dolomites

View from Vallon, Dolomites

View from Sass Pordoi

We continued on the bus on to the Pordoi Pass, reflecting on how we had cycled both of these cols we rode over on Sunday, only two days ago. Now they could not look more different in the snow. At Pordoi we got on the giant cable car that travels in a single 800metre span up to the summit of Sass Pordoi at 2950m. Up there the view was marvelous, cold and wind whipped. Walks from here would normally be possible but in the current snow conditions, all we can do is gaze out wistfully wishing to have brought crampons with us, from the refuge decking.

From here we journeyed by bus back to the Campolongo Pass, and walked along to the cable car going up to Crep de Munt from where a short walk up a very steep piste took us to the Refuge de Boe. From here a chairlift in tow stages wobbled off in to the snowy heights, and soon we were swaying along on it in the cold silence being taken up to the high point of Vallon, at 2,530m. Close by is the refuge Franz Kostner, and we were going to walk to this, but a few steps through the knee high snow deterred us in our trainers. We tarried a while and Jim went to investigate a via Ferrata that we could do at some point in the less snowy future called Ferrata Piz da Lech. This is in a very high and wonderful position, and fairly close to the top of the c able car. Piz da Lec via Ferrata description

We took the skimpy chairlifts back down to Boe and then a different route via cable car back into Corvara to finish our grand enchainment.

After this we cycled down to La Villa, where the numbers for the Maratona sportif have to be collected and where the start is later in the week.

Found a websiste, ‘The Great Dolomite Road‘ which charts , through a series of old picture postcards published as a book, the history of the road that leads up tp these passes.