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Save the legs strategy #1: Take the cable car up. And up, and up, and up. At the top station, we were already looking over the Lake di Fedaia with the Marmolada glacier in the background, easily at a higher elevation than we had been all week.
Save the legs strategy #2: Tackle the hardest climbing first. Luckily the via ferrata route did that for this this time...after just 15 minutes of hiking up we were already at the start of the cables. It did seem to go straight up for a while, but the book had warned us that this was just at the start. So we rose vertically and quickly for a few meters, then found ourselves clambering along a knife ridge, with views down both valleys, of lakes and glaciers and lovely swirling clouds.
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The first section included quite a bit of downclimbing, a rickety bridge, and monumentous drops to the north. The fog swirled in and out, giving us uncommon views of the air beneath our feet. I lent Rob my GoPro video camera, and he was entranced by it for a few hours, resulting in the best bits of video we captured during the trip. See the finished video here That might be why we have less real photos of this one, we were distracted by video equipment. :)
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The third section was more knife ridge stuff, very cool, with a couple of tunnels including one with lots of side trails and sniper holes. It looked a rather wet dreary place to camp out, but it was probably better for the soldiers than being outside in the winter.
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It is possible to walk down the hill, but the cable car was just so enticing, and fast! Although the other two ferratas had taken us slightly longer than the guidebook predicted, this one was quite a bit fast than we expected. Good for us, as it allowed us to reluctantly wave goodbye to the mountains and head down to Venice for a last day of sunshine and heat.
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