The day started relatively early, setting off at 8:30am so some of us could do Bodengo 2 and Puero Terra (cba for spelling) in one day. Our group set off first, however by the time we rigged the first pitch the second group had caught up. Our group headed straight down and tried to rig the second pitch quickly to gain some separation however what next ensued was a bit of a mare. The water at the bottom of the first pitch was a tad powerful for some (cue some Baywatch-esque swimming), group 2 rigged a too short of a rope meaning it could not be pulled down, and I nearly slipped down a pitch (Chris later said he may have knocked me so, erm, sure, I’ll go with that). Turns out the pitch we rigged had too short of a rope too, but Zoe was able to join an extra one on so we didn’t lose another rope.
Seeing as we now had 10 people down a splashy canyon with a quarter of our rope gone, Alice and Zoe decided that escaping was probably a good idea. Since luck was on our side, the escape turned out to be rather dodgy, involving Alice climbing up something resembling a lose, swingy Via Ferrata to rig a pitch for the rest of us, with us prusiking in dry, hot wetsuits and half with no chest harnesses. By the time I reached the top of the pitch, the slope up to where everyone else was sitting had become a muddy slide with the 8m pitch at the bottom – at least there were some lose moss and trees the size of twigs as handholds. Afterwards, Hannah rigged a handline for the others.
After that clusterfuck, we headed up the road 10 mins to grab some lunch from our cars – later Alice and Hannah joined after trying to rescue the lost rope, it’d been derigged due to posing a safety risk.
Then we went off to do Bodengo 1 (3rd time for myself), where we hard rigged a handline back up to the toboggan so our afternoon basically turned into a waterpark sesh.
(Video cred: Lea Stracquadanio)