For Becky’s birthday weekend we had optimistically booked a weekend in the Reintal in Südtirol, Italy. We were staying at the lovely Jausenstation Angerer gasthaus, which was situated just below the main ice fall.

In the week running up to the trip the temperatures were really low, so despite being late in the season it was still possible to ice climb, however the days were fairly short due to the impact of the sun on the ice. We had hoped to do a multi pitch on the other side of the valley later on in the weekend, but we didn’t manage to do enough climbing to be confident to head out on a multi pitch route after a few years without doing any ice climbing. The routes we managed to do before the sun made the ice too soft to climb were really fun, and it was great to be back on the ice!

Thankfully it wasn’t an issue having to finish the ice climbing early, as the Reintal is also brilliant for Langlauf (or XC skiing). We had never done it before so decided to give it a go, and it is certainly harder than it looks, and I definitely didn’t fall over…

After two days in the valley we decided to head to the Dolomites on the last day to do the classic ski route, the Sellaronda, rather than doing another morning of ice climbing. We will definitely be back next year, keen to do some of the multi pitch routes on offer in the valley.