lukebuehler.com About the life of a pilgrim

Adventures in the Mountains

The guy I met told me that there is a beautiful high track that I can follow town to Feltre, which was on my way. The day I left the Vajolet Rifugio it started to snow down to around 1000 meters. I just thought its gonna be a little cold. So down in the valley I bought some more food and moved on to climb the Passo De Sele. In a shelter still down in the valley, that looks like a real Italian tavern, I asked the guy there if I can to the passing and he said no problem. So I waled up to the next shelter where it already started to get windy. From there I had to do the last 600 to 700 meters up. As I went over the tree line it started to storm and snow intensely. I was so glad that I just bought two pairs of gloves down in the valley, one for climbing and one to have warm hands. Shortly before I reached my goal, the wind got so strong I could barely walk. When I made it to the shelter and entered it I was surprised to find one of the nicest Rifugios I've seen so far. The guy gave me nice single room where I immediately felt asleep after my battle with the storm. After I woke up I went town to the dining room where also a big group of people had gathered. Thy were from Austria and invited me to sit with them. As quick as they invited me to sit with them I also had a glass full of wine and the party started. They drunk the whole night and me with them. When it was already dark they started singing songs and dancing on the benches. It was so fun and felt good to laugh so much. The next morning I had to say good bye to my new friends and walked to the Rifugio Mulaz. After the night there I had to go over another high passing. There were only some steps in the the rock and everything was full of snow. I didn't have climbing equipment to hook in on the iron cables. It was quite an adventure to climb there alone in the snow and ice. Having survied this I had to walk over an high plateau up on around 2400 meters. I've never seen anything like it. Because It was so high up there were no plants at all, it felt like being on the moon. After walking up there for two hours I had to go down far to get to the next shelter. Being so tired I missed the the place I wanted to sleep and walked 40 minutes passed it. I was lucky that there was water so I camped out in the wild. To be a little bit warm I made a fire close to the river. I was only surrounded by stones for at least 10 meters so the fire was safe, but the guys up in the shelter saw fire trough the trees. As I was already sleeping for like 2 hours or so I suddenly saw flashlights and heard radios. Suddenly someone banged on my thent. When I crawled out, I saw that the fire fighters had come. They asked me if I made I fire, so I showed them the place. They told me that they had an alarm that there was fire in the wood. I felt so sorry for them because they were all voluntary firefighters and had to get up. The time the police arrived there were 10 guys there. The police took all my details and they all left again apologizing for waking me up. I apologized in return for making fire. The next day was quite tought on the body but at the next shelter I made friends again.  After sleeping for the last time in the mountains I walked down to Feltre. As I was walking along on the road, a couple whom I met the last night offered me a ride to Feltre what I was glad to accepted.

From there I had to walk along the road to Venice but more about that in the next post.

Now I'm in Venice enjoying the sun and warm weather, giving my body a little time to rest.