Tridentina Via Ferrata

The Tridentina Via Ferrata is one of the most popular routes in Italy and in spite of trying not to we ended up arriving there about 10 am on the sunniest Saturday of the Italian Holidays. So there was a queue. We tried to wait for it to pass but it only got longer and, gazing into the distance down the path we could see crocodiles of groups in shiny helmets arriving. So we started anyway, with people crowding onto the same section of cable both in front and behind, all the way up. There was a party atmosphere and no-one else seemed to mind that they were stuck in the gaudy human caterpillar that crawled the entire route of 600metres to the summit of the crag.

The route is fabulous – a large and often exposed and steep climb and traverse with tremendous exposure most of the way. Even if I might have felt a little nervous, this was completely offset by the thought that if I fell, I would only travel about 2 feet before the next person on the wire would break my fall. After the traverse you have to scale a long series of pegs and handholds, afterwards you find yourself in a chinmey with more pegs. At the top there is a shaky suspension bridge, across a deep ravine which is visible from the valley.

In total the climb is almost continous for 1.3 km straight up, so you need to have a certain amount of stamina and arm strength to keep going.