Between our days at Cinque Torrie, and to finish our trip we had two excellent days out rock climbing above Misurina. The first was a short day on Diedro Mazzorana and the second was the long mountain multi pitch route Mazzorana.
Diedro Mazzorana
With another day with a poor afternoon forecast, we found the easily accessible Diedro Mazzorana which climbed Monte Popena Basso in 4 pitches. After getting hopelessly lost on the approach thanks to the awful description in the Rockfax book we just about decided that we still had enough time to climb the route. The first pitch was excellent with some enjoyable corner climbing, and just enough gear to keep me comfortable. The second pitch was fairly scrappy, which took us towards the chimney feature for the outstanding final two pitches.
The final two pitches involved excellent chimney climbing, with some outstanding exposure, bridging, face climbing and a little bit of thrutching for good measure.
The views from the summit were excellent, and the descent back down was very easy which made for an excellent morning out.
When we got back down to Misurina we had a quick, and very cold swim in the lake before enjoying pizza and weissbier for a late lunch.
Mazzorana
On our last day we decided the climb another classic route, this time it was a full day route in the mountains as it had an hour walk in, 7 pitches and a very involved descent. The route we climbed was called Mazzorana, and it climbed Torre Wundt. This climb was made more enjoyable as the only route to the summit was by rock climbing up to it.
We started very early so that we would be off the rock before the afternoon rain came, and so that we could leave in good time as we had to start our journey home straight after the route. The morning was beautiful with a fantastic sunrise over the mountains we could see from our van parking spot.
We made good time on the walk in, and were soon at the base of the route. We thought we were going to be climbing a south face in the sun, but again the Rockfax book was incorrect and instead the route climbed a south west face, which meant that for the entire route we were in the cool shade.
The route took us up a massive chimney corner feature, but involved no thrutching. There was plenty of corning climbing, face climbing and chimney bridging which made the route really enjoyable.
After getting very confused on the first pitch due to a missing chockstone, we made good time up the route. The climbing was very good, however there was a lot of loose rock and I would not have wanted to be behind another party as it was very difficult to avoid dislodging some of it.
After quickly enjoying the summit view, we started the complicated descent. We wanted to make quick time down the descent as we knew it was loose, and didn’t want anyone above us. Unfortunately this didn’t happen due to the borderline dangerous description in the Rockfax book, which at one point resulted in me walking over to people climbing the route while trying to work out where to go… Eventually we found the correct route off the other side of the mountain, solved the clusterfuck of rope and were able to continue our descent. Thankfully the team above us were very considerate, and waited until we were off the second abseil station before starting their descent so that we didn’t get showered with rocks. After three loose abseils down easy angled terrain, we endured the rest of the descent down steep loose slopes, and then down a final very unstable gully back to the bags.
On the walk back to the van we finally got caught out by the afternoon rain, and got fairly wet. Once we got back to the van we had a quick cup of tea before starting our long drive back home.
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