Via Ferrata in the Rosengarten by James Henderson
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The Rosengarten is a range of ragged limestone peaks that stands nearly 10,000 feet tall, as magnificent as any in the Dolomites. Like all the Dolomite ranges it is famed for its lustrous pink glow in the long light of dawn and dusk. It is this colour, which is at its strongest in the spring and autumn, that gives the range its name. Rosengarten means the Rose Garden.
The Dolomites are famous for climbing - the 1000 feet, sheer-faced slabs, the pinnacles and towers, and the endless unclimbed routes are enough to make mountaineers salivate with expectation. But if you are more of a walker than a climber (and you wouldn't be seen dead in a fluorescent lycra one-piece and stickies anyway), it is still possible to get the best of this breathtakingly beautiful range. The answer is the 'Via Ferrata'. The Italian Alpine Club has laid out hundreds of vie ferrate (literally 'iron ways') along the traditional mountain paths. For most of the way they are walks, but where the going gets difficult you will find artificial aids hammered into the rockface to help you along.
We set off to explore the Rosengarten along Route 542, which leads from the Carezza side up to the Santner Pass. Sensibly enough the first 1000 feet is ridden in a gondola, and so, as we rose slowly I could size up the walk ahead. Above, the mountains towered like a range of teeth, vertical faces of grey limestone that dropped sheer for over a thousand feet down to a ledge of scree, a sort of lower gum, and then tumbled off again down to the treeline.
The tiny walkers were visible inching their way over the mountainside. From the top of the gondola they grappled with what seemed like a sheer face onto the scree ledge and then turned left and weaved off among the scree, steadily reducing in size until they were no bigger than brightly coloured ants in the distance. Finally they climbed diagonally into the rockface and disappeared among the towers and pinnacles.
The Italian name for the range is Catinaccio, but somehow the German Rosengarten is fitting enough. The Dolomites are the traditional interface between Italian and German speakers and the languages and cultures intermingle here (you will see German-looking gothic script on the walls and on the menus pasta followed by Apfel Strudel) and of course their armies have swarmed all over the area. Until the First World War the border of Austria ran through the middle of the Dolomites. The Germans are still coming, though. The latest invasion is of course the tourists, who arrive in droves in the summer months.
The gondola takes its name from Laurino, a mythical king of the Dolomites. His story is a sad one. He had a daughter who was unhappily married to the White King. In her misery she ran away and Laurino hid her in his garden of roses. But when the White King arrived he knew immediately where to find her and he overpowered Laurino and took her back. In his remorse, Laurino laid a curse on the roses: turning them to stone and saying that they should never be allowed to bloom in his kingdom again, neither by night nor day.
After a quick pause in a refuge (of which there are many in the Dolomites) we set off. The rockface that had seemed vertical from the gondola was quite a simple climb after all. The path wound its way up through gulleys and over buttresses, seeking the easiest path over the clearly visible strata of rock. The route was well marked with coloured paint splotches and there were the well-worn hand and footholds of the generations of walkers who had gone before. Where it became steep there was the reassurance of the 'ferrata' part of the via ferrata - woven wire ropes attached to the rockface with industrial-sized pitons and metal ladders.
We reached the ledge beneath the main rockface and the scree turned out to be a sea of rocks and boulders, some as big as cars, that had come to rest after falling from above. The only growth up here was tiny clumps of moss in the crevices. Otherwise it was completely white and light grey: the limestone rock, pitted and scarred, outcropped in frozen heads of hair and lumps of gooey Neolithic cake mix. The visibility was good on that day, with clear views of the pine-forested hills beneath us and the mountain ranges all around, but if the clouds had come down it would have been a ghostly and disorientating white-out.
Even in the off-season, between the hordes of summer treckers and the winter skiers, there were plenty of walkers about. In fact off-season is not a bad time to come because the mountains shine their best in the spring and autumn. At any rate the Germans were out and about, one couple, unfeasibly enough, dragging their dachshund around with them. Walkers always greet one another, and so there was a constant volley of nods and cheery greetings: 'Gruss Gott, Gruss Gott', and of little shaving brush feathers which they wear on their green walking hats quivering in the breeze.
After a mile or so along the ledge, the path headed steadily up into the massive cracks in the main rockface. We crept in among the crevices, up chimneys and underneath jumbled boulders. Huge pinnacles leaned out from the main face like shards of wood split from a log, ready to fall off in their own geological time (some time in the next million years or so probably). At moments the view would open out for 40 miles, all pine-forest and then distant grassland in the valley floors beyond.
Now that it was steeper, it was comforting to use the wire ropes and the metal ladders, as we worked our way along the ledges and up the sheer faces of the gulleys. On a via ferrata you will experience the rudiments of rock-climbing (there is satisfying intimacy in searching for good hand-holds and you feel somehow in touch with the rockface when you are spread-eagled across it), but no mountaineering skills are really necessary. If you feel unsafe then you can secure yourself to the metalwork with a simple harness and a carabiner.
It does help to have a head for heights, though, as some of the traverses can be a little 'exposed' (a typically understated mountaineering term for being loosely attached to a rock with nothing below you but oblivion). It was worth admiring the view, but difficult to prevent yourself from looking down too - a little alarming when you are standing on a ledge no wider than your foot.
Slightly relieved not to have fallen, and with the buzz of a day's scrambling and rock-climbing, I scurried up the final long gulley and emerged at the Santner Pass and the summit of the climb. With a slightly heady satisfaction we walked the short distance down to the refuge and sat on the veranda for a welcome hot chocolate and admired the view. Above us was the Croda de re Laurino, a cluster of grey pinnacles which stand together like a crown.
Of course, King Laurino did not have the last word when he banished roses from his kingdom. He may have cursed them during the night and the day, but he forgot to mention the twilight in between. To be honest, we were down below by dusk, more intent on the glow of mulled wine and a warm fire, but up top the Rosengarten were shining their magnificent roseate pink in the long light of the autumn sunset.