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Tre Cime trip and accident report 22.07.15 29-Jul-2016 At 6:14:37 PM Lingy

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Cheers everyone for the nice words – regarding what we’d do differently (given 20/20 hindsight), I’ve got to admit I’m really not sure. Speed is an obvious consideration, though I think we climbed as efficiently as we could under the circumstances (I guess I could have sped up some of the later pitches by 'french freeing' some of them, but, y'know...). Given that we’d been hiking and climbing in the Dolomites for a fortnight by the time we reached Tre Cime, we probably should have better-anticipated the abseil shenanigans (though we hadn’t yet encountered a route where we couldn’t so much as find the abseil point). While storms are certainly common in the Dolomites, it’s pretty difficult to foresee lightning, and even when you do, it's generally something you imagine as happening 'in the distance'/'somewhere else'/'over there'. (Indeed, it’s not uncommon for people to get benighted there in the rain, especially on some of the longer routes, but you don’t hear about them getting hit!).

What I definitely wouldn't change is our decision to cut the rope. While we were concerned about doing it at the time (for obvious reasons), I'm certain it was the best decision we could have made, as 1) there wasn't exactly much else we could do (both climbing and prussicking were out of the question), and 2) it sped up the descent enough so that we were at least off the wall (in the couloir) when the lightning struck. I don’t like to think about what it would have been like had it hit when we were mid-rappel...

On 28/07/2016 technogeekery wrote:
>Brilliant TR - a hell of a story. Dolomites are high on my list of places
>to climb, and while your story is sobering, the pics have only reinforced
>my wish to climb there.

Get there! It’s without doubt one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful places to climb (and hike and ride and via ferrata etc.). Even after all of this, we’re both raring to get back, though chances are we'll be doing a little more hiking than climbing this time...