The previous weekend we decided it is time to start our hiking trips to the mountains. Last year we discovered that hiking without overnight in the mountains is not proper hiking, therefore we would not waste our time and planned to come back on Sunday. We tried to call Raivis to get back the tent he borrowed from us, but it seems he had carelessly left Bolzano for a while without returning it before leaving. We chose Latemar, as we had never been there and it is not too high.
We picked s.18, which comes to bivouac Mario Rigatti. The weather was ok, not sunny and therefore not tiresome. At about 2.200 we reached first snow patches. Here we met a couple of 'loosers', who we think returned without crossing the second snow patch.
Later we were glad they returned as the path was crazy. Many places covered with snow, which we tried to avoid. You know, when it falls in to the shoes, it melts and that's not the most pleasant feeling in the world. There were parts where we had to use our climbing skills. It felt as we were going an easy ferrata, just that someone stole the cord.
We saw the bivouac in the pass and feared it will be difficult to descend, as the path went steeply down towards the pass. After some more climbing we reached it!
We were sitting in this luxurious bivuac, drank the beer and we could not understand how it was possible to descend the way we did. No path was seen, and it was so steep!
We had a very nice dinner, a bottle of wine. When the darkness fell around, we went to sleep. As the pot we filled with snow in the evening still contained some snow in the morning, we guessed it wasn't very warm inside. In the morning we had a soup and packed to leave as soon as possible as we knew the weather will deteriorate. After an hour we reached the upper valley where the ferrata Campanili di Latemar ends. It was a place where one could easily forget it was June: lots of snow was already there and it started snowing!
