MARCO'S STORIES - Four days walking in the Dolomites - Day 2: I'm not afraid…

I woke up late. I was tired. I have breakfast in the company of two kittens, looking at me from the window. Then start walking. I turn back. A last look at the church.

I left the mountain hut where I slept at nine and I arrived at 3 p.m. to the next.

The guidebook said it would take six hours and six hours it took. The days when I reached the destination in less time than foreseen have gone!

Four hours up and down: going up ten meters and then going down again twenty. In such a secluded valley that even the deers had to say "Why should we go there? There is nothing to do!.” But I met the horses…

In the end, a piece at a time, I lost 250 meters and, in the last stretch, in the last two hours, I had to climb 650 meters and then to go down 200 once again. Almost all on stony ground: a stone swings, another is too high. That stone rolls… “Oh my God, I lose my balance!

Thereupon I lost my control and I said out loud: "Go to hell, you son of a ... How much do you still want to go up?”

And it is at that time that I met the only human been who was doing the same route, but in reverse: I was going up and he was coming down. ”He heard me", I thought. "What a shame…!”

But he din’t say anything. Not a joke, not a smile of complicity, not a greeting… I mean... just to put me at ease…

He was around twenty meters above me. He continued to get down and I to go up. Then, as we got closer, he said, without looking at me and without stopping: “That’s nothing! You don’t know what awaits you!”. “Don’t tell me” I said, “Really?”. “Yeah, that's it. Good luck!”. In such a way: laconic, hard, tired, essential. As mountain men are!

Once arrived to the hut, 2500 meters, I had not the strength to move even a muscle. I was shaking from exhaustion and cold.

Then I settled down.

The hut is spartan: dormitories and one only single sink with cold water.

Some other one-night guests have arrived. Most of them don't wash themselves and don't change their socks and underwear. They'll have their dinner and will fall into the bunks, in the conditions as they find them. I brought in my backpack the bed sheets and the pillowcase. And I brought shorts and T-shirt for sleeping.

The bunk has become a bed. A bed fresh and clean. Then I went down to the sink, I closed the curtain and, heedless of the promiscuity, I stripped naked and washed myself with cold gushing water. With Marseille soap, which I also used to wash t-shirt, socks and underwear (I could not even bring shampoo!).

This morning the lady who runs the hut dropped down to the valley to collect mushrooms. Tonight we will have a fantastic dinner!

Her oldest daughter has already climbed three or four 8000 and she aims to be the youngest woman to climb them all. Alpine-style: no oxygen, no sherpa, no team that prepares the way (tent, food, ropes, …).

Great!

So, sitting outside the hut, after dinner, her mother told me about the conquest of K2.

"But you were not afraid?", I asked. “One in three people among those that go up, downhill loses his life. It is one of the most dangerous mountains in the world!”.

She looks at me with open eyes, sincere, quiet. The eyes of those who knows how it goes. The eyes of those who knows what they want from life. "No, I'm not afraid.”

I'll be very happy to provide details about the tour: maps, huts address, paths, photos, telephones, costs,... to anyone interested.