Ch4: Climb to Italy.

Still a little shaken from our encounter with the border police, we arrived at Hotel Tamara where the trail to the gully started. It went through the bush near the barracks and in the pitch dark we soon lost the path. Two or three dogs behind the fence of the barracks were barking furiously at us, and a couple of guards were yelling at them and at each other.  Eventually the bush thinned out and we found the way to the gully. Going was tough on the loose rocks so we sat down to rest and wait for the crack of dawn.

It was daylight by the time we reached our cache. Jalovec was shrouded in clouds and we hiked on loose rocks to the ridge we believed would lead to Mangart. The going was more difficult now and we had to rope up and start climbing. The weather suddenly changed and we were enveloped in thick fog. Sometimes the visibility was only a hundred feet and the fog muffled all sound. Progress was very slow and we were just guessing our direction.

Going to the ridge was difficult on the loose rocks…..

Franta was leading and I was belaying him. Suddenly the rope jerked and went taut. Franta had fallen! There was nothing I could do, just hang on to the rope and hope for the best. After a while the rope went slack and I felt two tugs. It meant “come to me, I am belaying you. “

Franta told me,“I stepped on a rock and it suddenly let go. I was lucky that I fell only fifteen feet before the rope stopped me and I was able to climb back. I banged my knee but it does not hurt much.” We continued climbing for another hour or two and then the ridge became less steep. The weather cleared up and we could see the ridge ahead of us was flatter and easier to hike on.

Then we came to a concrete post with signs pointing to Yugoslavia on one side and to Italy on the other. We were elated, we had made it!  All we had to do now was to follow the trail into Italy.  We didn’t need hard hats or ice picks any more so we threw them back into Yugoslavia.  But where was the trail?  It took us a while before we found small piles of rocks that suggested the markings of a trail. The ridge was now flat, sloping slightly towards Italy. Our joy was short lived however, when the fog came back and we became disoriented. We kept our direction by making sure the wind blew on the same side of our face.  Sometimes we threw a rock in front of us to make sure we did not walk over the edge.

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 The fog cleared up a few times and we could verify that we were following the right path. Once we even saw our final destination, Lake Fusino in the distance below.

The trail vanished and the flat ground ended suddenly at steep rock wall. Then we saw a chain, with one end bolted to the rocks and the other end disappearing off the edge of a ledge. It must be the trail! Franta threw a rock over the ledge and after what seemed to be an eternity we could faintly hear its impact. This was not the type of trail we were expecting! The trail or rather a path followed narrow ledges and outcroppings in almost a vertical wall. In many places the ledges were very narrow and a long chain was bolted to the wall for the hiker to hang on to.  In other places descent was made on a set of steel rungs cemented into the wall face and going straight down. We were shrouded again in fog and could see only a few hundred feet. Any sense of direction or height was lost; it was just an endless, eternal descent. Sometimes a loose rock came clattering down close to us; our hard hats would have been handy now.

Finally we stood on a large ledge and debated what to do next. We had been on our feet for more than thirty hours and were dead tired. The evening was only few hours away. Should we stop here and bivouac overnight? The weather was uncertain, it could rain. We decided to keep going.

It was almost dark when we reached the ground. The hiking was easier but not much. We had to push our way through waist high, thick mountain shrubs. Finally the shrub thinned out and we were walking in a meadow. Walking is not the right description because we were feeling our way in the pitch dark, hands in front of us.  A short time later we heard a bell sounding from ahead of us.  Suddenly Franta who was walking in front of me yelled and then started to swear. He had walked straight into a cow head! There were many bells around us; we were surrounded by a herd of cattle.

In a distance we could see light. In a little while we came to a lake and almost collapsed from exhaustion. It was a marshy area but we could not be bothered to look for a better place and quickly pitched the tent. The lake water stank with decay and was not drinkable.

A few hundred yards away from us was the light and bonfire. I grabbed a water bottle and went there. They were Italian campers, four adults and some kids. Judging from their faces I was not a pretty sight when I appeared in the light. I told them in English that we were mountain climbers; we just came down from Mangart. One man spoke English and I asked for water. He passed me a water jug and after I had quenched my thirst I told him that we had climbed over the mountains from Yugoslavia. They got quite excited when I explained to them we had escaped all the way from Czechoslovakia. I refilled my water jug, said good night and headed back to our camp. My mouth was still dry so I opened the jug and took one sip, then another one and when I was close the camp, the jug was half empty. So I filled it with stinking lake water and gave it to Franta. He guzzled the whole jug, didn’t offer me even a gulp, nor did he thank me for the effort -that bugger!

                                                        Lake Fusino. We camped on the other side of the lake.

  It was late when we woke urp next day to a steady rain. The tent’s waterproof floor felt a bit strange. I opened the tent to look outside. Shit, there was water all around! We had pitched the tent near a little creek that was now in flood.  There was no sense in trying to move the tent in the rain, the water was not very deep. We dug a ditch, built a dam and diverted the flood around us. Then we went back inside and slept again. The morning was cold and bright. We could see Mangart and the ridge shining with fresh snow. We were lucky, if we had stayed on that ledge we might not have made it down alive.

Our food supply was down to one can of sardines. We ate it and were mulling over what to do. There was some commotion outside. We opened the tent and standing there were the campers I had met two nights previously. Each carried something. They gave us bread, cheese, sausage, rolls a bottle of wine, fruit and more. “Welcome to freedom” said one and shook our hands.

                 This may be the side of the mountain where we came down. Going down in fog was quite unnerving.

                      I drew this sketch from memory some fifteen years after our escape.