Via del Calice: 13 hours car to car

14 pitches, all on gear, and a party ahead of us. Then we got the descent wrong.

Machine-translated from the German original. The German version is the one I actually wrote.

Fourteen pitches, entirely on gear. That alone makes a route slow — you place, you check, you place again.

On top of that there was a party ahead of us. The two together produced thirteen hours car to car.

Then we got the descent wrong and came down a different set of rappels. That’s the part you least need at the end of a long day: you’re tired, it’s getting darker, and suddenly the description no longer matches what you’re looking at.

We got down. But it was close enough that I’m writing it down here.