Italy 2007

I was helping someone change a tire when he offered to let me stay at his place in Bozan (Bolzano). It was an offer to good to refuse! I had stayed in the town for a day when I decided to head into the mountains even though the weather looked incremental. I figured I could go in and camp the night and hopefully have a large enough gap to climb a peak and head out. Roberto gave me a ride to the base in a town where, yup once again, I took the tram. The 2 hour run back down Brandjoch in Austria 2 days earlier had made my legs puddy and they had not yet recovered. The pain on each down step was intense and sometimes I would lose balance just going down stairs! So the tram was inviting. The day was July 3rd and summiting a peak in the Dolomites was going to be my own personal 4th of July celebration. Last year on the 4th of July I was camping at 11,900 feet on the Grand Teton preparing for the climb in the morning. Gotta keep the streak going.