TREKKING OVER THE ALPS (eBook)

First Day of Travel – July 2015

Helsinki - Cortina d’Ampezzo

We woke up early, had to be at the airport at six. The flight from Helsinki to Venice left on Sunday morning, 12th of July. In the plane, there was another trekking group by some tour operator, also. The members of the group didn’t seem to know each other beforehand. Personally, I haven’t gone on treks with strangers. Not that I’ve been on group travels either, for that matter. To each his own, and sociable lone walkers on their own. I think the article, “The sociable lone walker”, that was published in the Retki magazine about my last book was headlined very aptly.

In a way, I completely understand going on group travels, since everything is planned and often also tried and tested beforehand, so you can just enjoy yourself safely without having to constantly think about what to do and when, not to mention choosing and planning the route. On the other hand, for me, this aspect of trekking is an essential part of the trip.

I start planning the trip early in the year by first deciding on the route and booking the flights and ordering the necessary maps and route descriptions. You can’t possibly plan everything in advance, however, so there will be unexpected situations and matters to sort out on each day of the trip. Then you’ll just have to solve them one by one. This makes traveling a bit of an adventure, which is something I hope to convey through this book, also.

On the plane, there were also families with kids on their way south for a holiday. Behind us sat a young couple with a girl of maybe six years. The girl whined the whole flight, e.g., “What can I do now!” while dangling from the back of my seat. Not a very relaxing start to the trip. But it’s good there are MP3 players.

The lobby at the Venice airport was terribly crowded. First, we checked where the bus stop for the bus going to Cortina d’Ampezzo was. I had booked the bus tickets online a couple days ago. The price for the bus ride was fairly reasonable, 20 euros per person. After checking the bus stop, we went to find something to eat, since we had one and a half hours before the bus would leave. At the checkout, the cashier tried to give me change for 10 euros even though I’d given 20 euros. I wasn’t buying it. We had tasty, heated baguettes. From the airport restaurant, we could see the silhouette of Venice.

It was nice to get to the quiet airconditioned bus after the noisy airport. The bus ride was a little confusing start for a trek in the mountains because there were palm trees and corn fields a couple meters high at the beginning of the ride. Half of the passengers (the youngsters) slept, and the rest watched the changing scenery from the bus windows. That’s how it was with us, too. My 13-year-old son slept, and I watched the scenery.

My son had already hoped to come with me for a couple of years, but the routes I trekked then (Haute Route from Chamonix to Zermatt and GR 5 from Chamonix to Nice) were in my opinion too challenging for someone his age and I hadn’t dared to take him along. I’ve written books also of those treks: Haute Route - travelogue from Chamonix to Zermatt hike (in Finnish and English) and GR5, Alpine trekking from Chamonix to Nice (so far only in Finnish. It has been appended in 2019, in the newer edition, to also cover the first part of the route from Lake Geneva, i.e., virtually the whole French Alps). When my son had asked to come with me for two years, I had to pay heed to his interest. After a few years, he might not be interested in his parent’s company on holiday anymore. This trip wasn’t going to be an easy trek, but my son has grown in recent years and has participated in many sports so I thought his physique could handle it. We’ll just take it one day at a time and see how things go.

My son does have experience of being in the mountains, though. Three years ago, we did the Tour the Mont Blanc together. He did well then, especially considering that he was only 10 years old at the time. In the previous couple years, we had done some day hikes in Austria and the Tatras a couple of times, so he knew pretty well what to expect. It did feel nice to be traveling together. You can’t take it for granted that your child would be interested in trekking. As for my younger son, I wouldn’t bring him along precisely because he is not interested. Maybe he will be later. You should never ruin a hobby by forcing it on a kid.

We arrived in Cortina around one thirty after roughly two hours on the bus. We wandered around the village centre for a while and found the Tourist Information where we received directions to the hotel I had booked beforehand. What was different about this trip was that I had made some reservations in advance. On my previous trips, I haven’t booked almost anything in advance, except the flight home. Now I had booked accommodation for the first and last nights, the return flight in three weeks’ time and three lodgings at mountain huts, so I had booked about one of three weeks in advance. Maybe one thinks things through more thoroughly when traveling with a child.

In Cortina, nearly all the shops were closed, as they often are after midday in Southern Europe. One small shop was open, however. From there, we bought some snacks. We found the hotel just outside the village centre a short walk away. The hotel was nice, though maybe past its prime – like me...

We asked the friendly young woman at the reception about the cable car we’d seen along the way. She said it would be open until five thirty. Of course, we had to try it, especially since the weather was so good. The sun was shining, and the temperature was over 30 (Celsius) degrees. At the reception, we also asked for advice for tomorrow’s bus routes. We took our backpacks to our room, ate the snacks, and went to find the cable car station. Once there, we found out that we’d have a little less than an hour at the top if we came down in the last cable car. The tickets cost 50 euros. I decided we’d go now so we wouldn’t have to try to fit it in our itinerary later or regret not taking the cable car up at all.

A half hour and three cable car lines later we were at an altitude of 3,241 metres (Tofana di Mezzo). The view was breathtaking. The cable car climbs up to one of the highest peaks in the Dolomites. It was surprisingly warm up there, and no wind at all.

A few summers ago, me, my dad and (the same) son visited Hintertux, near Mayrhofen, Austria, where the cable car’s upper end station is at approximately the same altitude (3,250 metres) as in Cortina. Then, however, it seemed like it was the dead of winter. We visited ice caves and went alpine skiing on the highest slopes – in July! The weather can change drastically from year to year in the mountains.

In Cortina, you can climb a few dozen altimetres higher from the cable car station, first by ladders and then on a rocky path. A Via Ferrata trail starts nearby. In short, it means a rough and difficult trail, where you have to lean on cables and other climbing aids bolted into rock faces. Usually, a harness and helmet are required. That was also the case on this trail, which was at an exceptionally high altitude. We had no intention of trying it, nor did we have the equipment for it.

This peak, however, could be reached without any additional gear. Of course, we had to walk to the very summit since it was attainable, and we were so close. I must have a climbing gene. One day, scientists will likely find an explanation for this instinctive urge to climb... From the cable car station, we started climbing the steps at a rapid pace, since we didn’t have much time before the last cable car back down. We hadn’t yet taken many steps, though, before we started feeling a bit dizzy. An altitude of over three thousand metres combined with a fast ascent from the valley clearly has an effect on your oxygen intake capacity. This is how the elderly must feel when they say they feel dizzy. So, we took it a bit slower after that.

When we were taking the obligatory “we were here” photos, we heard a strange low-pitched sound from somewhere. We looked to the summit, and saw a man playing a three-metre-long horn. It was a surreal situation, suddenly seeing the silhouette of the man and his horn against the sky. The sound echoed surprisingly well from the surrounding mountains. I too made my way up to the summit; my son remained a little lower. The rest of the climb is rather steep with loose gravel. But at the top, you can see without obstructions in every direction. It was a terrific experience.

After that, we took the last cable car to the valley, where we noticed old pictures from the Cortina Winter Olympics in 1956 on the side of a house. They were similar old-style black and white photos than the pictures in Kisahalli which was built for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. The place in Cortina was an ice rink used in the Olympics. To our surprise, it was open. There were skaters inside, probably tourists. Most of them were worse skaters than primary schoolers in Finland. But we also saw a few good figure skaters practicing.

The ice rink has unusual stands made of dark wood. Somehow, it fits that particular ice rink well, even if it looked a little strange in the eyes of a Finn. To my understanding, they have filmed a scene for the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only in the Cortina rink. In it, three ice hockey players try to tackle Roger Moore. Naturally, it doesn’t end well for the bad guys. I think the...