The Piz Pordoi towers over the Pordoijoch in the Dolomites Sella group in the Italian Alps. With easy access from the pass and the prospect of a ride home at the end of the day via the ski lift, it is a magnet for walkers and, of course, for climbers attracted by the steep rock towers and sensational scenery.

For us though, climbing there has taught us to always expect the unexpected. Last time it was a sudden storm that blew in from the Atlantic, ending in a rescue of an injured German climber. But this latest adventure was a bit stranger, including an excursion into the bowels of the earth and an unexpected tale of lost love.

​The line of choice was the South Face Route, highly recommended in the guidebook although, judging by our subsequent experience, we did rather suspect that the author had never actually been near it – particularly as it faced North West!!

The approach across alpine meadows to the Piz Pordoi in the Dolomites, Italian Alps (Photo Credit: Tony McKenny)

The Piz Pordoi – our route is on the face down left of the summit (Photo Credit: Tony McKenny)

The route, with the dangerous traverse right (Photo Credit: Tony McKenny)

​Even the start itself was elusive but eventually we found it by following the trail of goat tracks to a direct line up the initial wall, marked with old, faded slings and the occasional piton. Manouvering carefully up past loose blocks, a “death on a stick” traverse then led us a long way right over steeply sloping shards of razor-sharp rock to a belay out on the edge. Retreat wouldn’t be much fun from here, given the general looseness and heaps of tottering blocks, but then the sun shone, and we had some food and the long corner up to a chimney was sensational.

​There we prevaricated. The guide said “through a hole” but there wasn’t one, just a horrible dark, vertical, dirty slot, and neither of us wanted to go that way, so we debated a bit.  Eventually I gave in and entered the darkness – the alternatives were even worse, if that was possible – and we pushed the sacks through in front of us until we stumbled out onto a steep, juggy wall that revived our spirts.

​​Another glorious long corner followed, steep, open and airy but then, darn it, another tight chimney. Again, “through the hole and pop out” the oracle said but as soon as you wormed inside, you blocked off the light and it was a stygian gloom. Tom was again a bit too big to get through and up easily but after some more discussion, and some faint-hearted excursions out on to the loose walls nearby, we resigned ourselves to the inevitable. Back again into the bowls of the earth.

​Speleology 500m up a big face, headlamps on in the dark – weird climbing indeed - “But soft! What light through yonder chimney breaks?” (sorry, Will). And there it was, a tiny hole, maybe 20m further up above us. Sack off, helmet and hips jamming, I indeed “popped out” on to the plateau, like a meerkat blinking in the evening sunlight. A rock from the edge skittered down the chimney, missing Tom but leaving behind on the ledge a small leather camera lens case that had been secreted under it.

And there, bizarrely, just metres away, was the téléphérique station. Tom squirmed and fought, and the oaths from underground were personal and colourful: eventually he somehow morphed thin and squeezed out as the attendant at the station urgently gesticulated for us to move our backsides if we wanted a ride home in the last cabin of the day.

ABOVE: Click to enlarge and see captions. (Photo Credits: Tony McKenny)

​Back in the Rifugio that night, happy with our “Grosse Bieres”, we opened the old lens case I had stuffed into my pocket and for a moment stopped being our usual raucous selves as we looked at the unexpected contents. For there inside it was the oddest thing. Carefully folded and perfectly preserved was a sheet of paper and on it was a beautiful votive offering, a climber’s letter written in French to his “Seigneur”, begging for his sweetheart Sophie back. A poignant plea from a sad man asking his god to solve his broken heart.

The love note - lost love in the Dolomites (Photo Credit: Tony McKenny)

Moving the note from the Pordoi weighed on our minds over the next couple of weeks, although of course we didn’t talk about it, being good Aussie blokes, but eventually we carried it with us all the way up the beautiful Alvera Route on the Col de Bois and left it in its case under a large rock right on the summit. We can but hope you came good, “Seigneur”, but I guess we will never know…
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Funny old game, this climbing lark.