Cortina and the Dolomites

After Venice we jumped on a train and headed towards the Dolomites......

San Vito - just outside Cortina. Good postcard type photo huh.......was just as beautiful in person.....

After two nights in Cortina we headed up the Tofane massif to do some hiking. We caught this cable car up one afternoon to Lagazuoi Rifugio to start. For some reason this cable car freaked me out, had a hard time looking out the window, which doesn't usually happen to me on cable cars......it was pretty steep....

Rifugio Lagazuoi in the clouds.....

That afternoon (we stayed in the rifugio that night) we went around the open air world war I museum up there. There are all these tunnels that were made by the Austrians and the Italians during WWI and they have opened a bunch of them so you can go through (with helmet and headlamp). It amazed both of us that anyone could fight a war up in the mountains, but they did, this area was pretty populated during that time. 

Stian poking out of one of the many openings to the tunnels. 

We also went for a short hike to look at a Via Ferrata (Iron Walkway). My knee unfortunately (esp unfortunately as it was my good knee) crapped out on a steep downhill, and played up all the time we were up there, which was really frustrating. I gave up on the way and Stian went on and tried it out. Can you spot him in this photo? 

Here he is. It wasn't the Via Ferrata (that was around the corner), but this is pretty indicative of many of the paths in the Dolomites....pretty cool huh.....

The next day we headed on a hike to the Rifugio Dobina. It was a beautiful day......though I was pretty annoyed at this point by my knee being a pain....

A Via Ferrata we did attempt on the way to Rifugio Dibona. I've not done much climbing or anything, but the times I have height has not been a problem. For some reason on this trip it became a problem for me. Stian was fantastic and really helped me up this not very scary wall, but I was pretty dissapointed in myself. I was fine once we got to the ladders, those were not a problem, it was the scaling with just the wire that seemed to freak me out for no apparent reason. 

So we went up a WW1 tunnel, then I waited at the top as Stian went further up the peak. He didn't have time to go all the way, but he did get to do a little. As I was waiting for him it began to rain, and then began to hail, so was getting pretty worried when he finally reapeared. We hoofed it down the tunnel through an ensuing water fall and got to the bottom where we had left our bags.  

Yup, those black dots are our bags, placed nicely in the middle of what was now a river. Everything was soaked.....really soaked....

The calm after the storm, this is the view from Rifugio Dibona. Pretty spectacular. 

This is the Tofane plateau, where we were when we got really wet! 

The next day was the down day, which really bugged my knee. Here is a Via Ferrata that Stian did most of, but I being a total pain in the butt at this point, bugged out of. So he went across and back, then we both walked down and around. 

And catching the chair lift back down to the bottom. No height issues on this one, only double chin issues....

A quick snooze in the park as we waiting for the store to open so we could return our via ferrata gear....
And a wonderful sunset on the train towards Verona....