Col dala Pieres + Piz Duleda

Finally, I've had another chance to visit the Dolomites, even if it was just for two days. The weather forecast for day one was not that great either, but we took our chance anyway, and we were rewarded for that.

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We take the cable car up to Col Raiser and start in a slightly descending line past the Regensburger Hütte / Rifugio Firenze (yes, that's one and the same hut...) to the start of trail 17B. This path aims for the seemingly inaccessible Forcella della Piza, a saddle with an eye-catching rock tooth in the middle of it. A nicely constructed path with some wooden staircases makes the spectacular ascent surprisingly straight-forward.

For the Forcella della Piza, we continue (past some edelweiss flowers) to the Col dala Pieres. The wide summit plateau is reached over a band in the west face. The descent on the other side towards the saddle of Forces de Siëles also involves a few bits of easy scrambling and short sections with fixed cables.

We continue on our high route, now climbing steadily towards the Piz Duleda. The ascent from the Furcella Nives to the Piz Duleda is the only part of our route that is not so well-marked, but the trail (mostly through a scree-slope and with some easy scrambling on the final couple of metres to the summit) is generally obvious.

The descent is along the same path back to the Furcella Nives. The easier route now goes back to Forces de Sieles before following trail 2 back down into the valley. We instead pick the more challenging descent to the Roascharte. Once again, the South-Tirolean trail-builders have been incredibly crafty in constructing a pretty direct route through a seemingly vertical rock-face, using just some fixed cables and a short ladder. Less experienced hikers will wish to use a via ferrata set here (K2), but since the hardest bits of scrambling are not so exposed, it's also possible to do without (T4+).
Note that this is definitely the crux of the route, even though on the maps it is strangely not marked as a via ferrata / protected path (while some much easier sections on the Col dala Pieres are marked as such...).

From the Roascharte, an easy descent through the valley brings us to our overnight accommodation at the Regensburger Hütte. The skies start to get brighter in the evening, putting the surrounding mountains in a spectacular light at sunset.