How we camped right on top of Passo Giau by miracle

Hey adventurers! 

Sleeping at the Messner Museum wasn’t certainly the last punk adventure we experienced on this trip. The next day we moved to Passo Giau, which I had never been to before. I don’t really know why because it’s fabulous. But there’s quite an interesting story to this.

The plan was clear – to sleep in a tent on Passo Giau. It was end of April, so the snow was gone in most places. From Cortina, we hit the road up, and as we passed two thousand meters of altitude, the snow suspiciously began to accumulate. But when we passed the last curve, we couldn’t believe our eyes. There were about three meters of snow. EVERYWHERE. We underestimated that. We had a summer tent and summer sleeping bags and sleeping in the snow was out of the question. We panicked a bit because it was about 6PM and there wasn’t much time to think of plan B. We parked at the top, jumped out of the car and rushed to the nearest hill, where a beaten path led, so we didn’t sink into the snow to our waist level but only to knee level. 

And guess what we saw!

On the opposite side, we saw a tiny piece of earth that wasn’t covered with snow and was almost made for camping. Miracle. We immediately went to see it more closely and make sure it wasn’t waterlogged or something and voilá! It was really the only area without snow. We took the place right away, so that no one else would steal it. You should have seen how kitsch it was. While Kuba was pitching a tent, I pulled out a stove and gin and cooked some dinner & prepared drinks to celebrate.

We ate, drank, talked and watched the setting sun for the rest of the evening. When it got dark we crawled into our sleeping bags because it suddenly felt like -20 degrees.

And the view in the morning? Another dose of kitsch. Well, you can be the judge of that. This was really the real million-star hotel.

E.