Hiking in the Dolomites with Ilse: Day 5, Tre Cime
I tried explaining today’s experience to a friend, and all I could come up with was this … I was in heaven on our previous hike, but today, I met god.
Tonight at dinner, every single one of us talked about our fatigue for the very first time all week. This isn’t the kind of fatigue from just physical exertion—this is the kind that comes from emotional overload. We spent about 7 hours today in a perpetual state of awe. PERPETUAL. Around every corner, there was more awe. At one point, I said out loud, “My heart and my eyes can’t take any more beauty.” I thought I was saturated by beauty the other day, but today was … just too much. Too. Much. Magnificence.
The hike was easy to start, but then it got hard. Sometimes, *really* hard. And then we hit a spot that was scary—I mean, *really* scary: we traversed a huge scree field; the “trail” was about one foot wide, and the scree dropped off a steep slope. If you fell, the scree would’ve accelerated your descent, like a bunch of ball bearings.
Oh, and speaking of ball bearings … as we hiked into higher elevations, we started finding remnants of the WW1 Battle in the Dolomites, between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (old bullets, barbed wire, pieces of hand grenades, etc). Below is the link to a great article about the “most treacherous battle of WW1.”
“Even amid the carnage of the war, the battle in the Dolomites was like nothing the world had ever seen—or has seen since.” Read it HERE.
We hiked a total of about 7 hours today, and we hit an elevation of around 8300’.
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