Wake Up and Walk On: a Dolomitic Dream
[Day 3]
by Rudston Steward
’m fine with getting up at 4:30am—as long as it’s for a compelling enough reason. It’s a short list: in the African bush, to look for leopards; in the tropics, to hear the dawn chorus of birdsong in the rainforest; and in the mountains, to see the sunrise from a summit.
I’d set out in the half-light from the Bonnerhuette refuge, where we spend the second night of our Dolomites Safari, at precisely 4:48am. My headlamp guided me along the first steep steps, cold air stinging my nostrils; breathing felt a bit like snorting frost or inhaling tiny icicles in the dark. The path contoured around the hill before zigzagging sharply up towards a spur; beyond that the pale crown of Mount Pfannhorn rose dawn-muddled and somber, peering down at me impassively. A stone-clad sentry, unfazed by the trifling incursion I was mounting at its base.
A BIT LIKE SNORTING FROST OR INHALING TINY ICICLES IN THE DARK
As I climbed the light swelled, a gradual suffusion, so that it seemed I was walking the very day into being. It first illuminated the peaks of the Dolomiti di Sesta far behind to the west, then broadened into a glowing swathe. Emanating, apparently, from the stone on high and radiating towards the forests below. I reached the summit at 5:22am, itself still in shadow, a towering vantage point from which to observe the limpid dawn seeping steadily into the valley. When the first dazzling ray of sunlight broke, a golden shaft of luminescence, the landscape instantly danced to a different tune. As if someone had flipped a chromatic switch in the sky, tuning the world to a higher frequency.
The mountains were now laid out before and below me, a monumental cordon of fissured and filigreed rose-tinted rock, stretching as far as the eye could see. The furthest ranges glowed pale mauve, seeming insubstantial, ethereal. Standing alone on this apex of the world—needled by cold, elated, completely in awe—it occurred to me I might get up at 4:30am more often. Find more leopards. And rainforest birdsong. More sunrises from many more summits.
SOMEONE HAD FLIPPED A CHROMATIC SWITCH IN THE SKY, TUNING THE WORLD TO A HIGHER FREQUENCY
I don’t usually indulge the wishful thinking that seeks to anthropomorphize nature. But if those mountains could deign to speak—a communiqué bathed in impossibly ethereal light—they’d probably say: Wake up! Don’t waste a sunrise. Wake up and walk on.
I floated through the rest of the morning as if in a Dolomitic dream. Back to the refuge for breakfast. And later: a 13km afternoon hike, 900 meters of ascent, through what I consider to be some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the world. That evening we arrived at Locatelli refuge, a bigger beast and more crowded than the intimate Bonnerhuette of the night before. But with a killer sunset view of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo to compensate. Sunrise to sunset: when you’re walking in the Dolomites it’s sometimes hard to tell where the dreaming ends or the waking begins.