A week above the clouds

The alarm went off at 4:40. By five we were climbing in the dark, headlamps sweeping over wet grass, the valley below still full of cloud. I had promised myself I would not chase the sunrise. I chased it anyway.

That became the rhythm of the week: wake before the light, walk until the view opened, then sit for as long as the cold allowed.

The long way up

The Alta Via is not technically difficult. It is just relentless: an hour of climbing, two hours of descending, then another climb that you did not see on the map. We carried too much bread and not enough water, and by the third day my shoulders had opinions.

Somewhere above Passo Gardena the clouds dropped below the ridge and the whole range turned into islands of rock. I took eleven photographs of the same peak. None of them explain what it felt like to stand there.

The mountains do not care whether you get a good photograph. That is most of their appeal.

What the camera missed

The best moments of the week were the ones I did not photograph. An old shepherd near the Lagazuoi hut waving us toward a bench and pouring two small glasses of something clear and dangerous. The sound of cowbells arriving before the cows. The smell of the hut at seven in the morning, which was mostly wet wool and coffee.

On the last morning the fog never lifted. We walked out anyway, boots soaked, and caught the bus down to the valley with a group of climbers who had all given up too. Nobody said much. I think we were all a little grateful for the excuse to stop.

I came home with five rolls of undeveloped film, a sunburn in the shape of my camera strap, and a note in my phone that says: go back in September.