[Will Hunt]

A group of us were going to drive out to the Dollies on these dates and share the cost out between us. 2 cars with 3 people in each. Our driver has dropped out so there are two people who are looking for a lift out there and back. We've booked the dates off work and could probably change them so could be flexible.

Is anyone going out at about this time who wants to share petrol and ferry costs? Does anybody have any other ideas of how to make the trip happen. I've looked online and flights from Leeds come in at £150 return but then car hire is astronomical at about £378. Adding that up and then considering the cost of fuel to get from Venice to the Dolomites. Driving round there for a couple of weeks and camping & food costs - its just too much cheddar.

Any bright ideas of how to get there on a shoestring? If anyone else is in the same boat we could potentially pinch a car from our parents, insure ourselves on it and then drive out in that at much the same cost as the original plan but we'd need an extra one or two people to share the cost out.

[tomtom]

Did you shop around for the car hire Will, as I bet you can get it for close to half that...
T

[slackline]

Doubt you can get a huge saving though, last year we paid £295.72 for two weeks car-hire for the last two weeks of July (17th-31st) for a Fiat Panda (only two of us, but the 500 just looked a little too cramped).

Only needed to fill up a couple of times throughout the week though despite moving around a fair bit (although we did spend two nights up at a hut which negated driving for three days).

[tomtom]

Or... I dont know how big the one car going is - could two of you fly out there, and make your own way up to say Cortina (train, bus, hitch?) and then use the one car for the general ferrying about? etc..?

[Will Hunt]

It could be possible. The concern I had with doing the public transport and hitching thing was with getting around when there. This is where some local knowledge could come in handy, Slackers.
How easy would it be to do a trip there with no car access and how hard would a trip be with limited car access? On Skye you can do a trip carless easily once you're there. You pitch up in Glenbrittle and if you want to move then Sligachan is only a short hitch away. Is it the same case with the Dolomites? Are a lot of the routes bunched together and you can approach from a campsite or central place? I'm conscious that we have the 100 classic climbs book and that this means that a particular mountain or area may only have a small handful of routes listed.

[slackline]

Well I've only been the one time last year and as we had a car didn't look at the bus timetables at all I'm afraid.

Behind Cortina you have a load of routes on Pompagnon which you could probably walk to in an hour or so depending on fitness & sack weight...


Pompagagnon by slack---line, on Flickr


If there is a bus running up/over the Falzerago Pass (and this suggests there is) then you've got Cinque Torre, Col de Bois, Falzarego Towers and quite a few other crags at your disposal (Cofe has done one on Tofana I think, we did the Alveraza route at Col de Bois and a few routes at Cinque Torre which has sports as well as multi-pitch up the towers, several easy-ish lines on the three towers that are grouped next to each other which would make a good day out).  You can get cable cars up to Cinque Torre (although if on a budget this may prove expensive) and there is also a cable car that goes from the road up to the higher parts of Pompagnon from the road that goes to Mizurina, although you'd still have to get there.

I'd say if you're looking at doing some of the longer multi-pitch routes you'd be hard pushed to do more than one in a day anyway unless really fast & efficient, so it would likely be a case of trekking out of Cortina each day (no idea what the authorities are like about wild-camping, saw a few people and stopped ourselves for one night on a back road, deer when we pulled up and something snaffled food leftovers from tent awning in the middle of the night).

One thing that might be worth considering, although its not really budget, is trekking up to huts and staying at those (having a specific BMC hut concession card would drastically reduce the cost, but if you do this and are offered any Genziana liqueur my advice would be to politely decline and have something with berries in instead).

Its a bit confusing, but in conjunction with UKC's map/overview in their crags database Planetmountain.com has a lot of information on the Dolomites.

I don't think much of that is very useful I'm afraid, but hopefully others with more experience/knowledge  can chip.

[tomtom]

Or hire a car for a week? Or few days instead?

[Will Hunt]

Thanks for the hints folks. It looks like we might have roped in someone who is keen and hopefully by the end of the day we'll know if they can pinch their parents car. Fingers crossed!