Last week we picked up and moved about 60 miles inland near the town of Oliena. We’re staying at a Refugio (refuge) of Monte Maccione, a co-op started in the 60’s by some Barbargios, the Italian equivalent of the American hippie. Above, the majestic walls of the P. Carabidda, which look almost, like the Dolomites—with apologies for lack of a better comparison. We stowed our belongings and immediately hit the Monte Maccione crags above the Refugio. Historically, this is the taproot of Sard climbing, the place where it all began thanks in part to the alpine military school of Predazzo who first opened many of the routes. 

One our way uphill through the old holm oaks and pine forest we encounter the military training ground. The climbs are stiff, made stiffer by countless climbers polishing the limestone to its stone cousin marble. We find it unsatisfying even without the presence of a noisy German family and their five screaming children. 

So we move higher up and discover the Marantonio Slab, a fine piece of rock featuring a rare splitter that practically calls out to us when we spot it. We’re losing sun, but spot a nice little dihedral leading two pitches up over a bulge. Caroline is on fire as is her usual and starts up Magico Spettacolo (6a). It’s so good I make her climb it twice. Her personality is one of contracted calmness. But when she is climbing sometimes I find it necessary to encourage her to wear herself out the way terrier owners do with their dogs. I’ve been doing a lot of this recently as the shoulder I fell on in Alabama last December is starting ache. I suspect I have torn a ligament in my rotator cuff. And with 19 days of climbing with but one rest day, it’s not getting any better. I need help just getting my left arm into the shoulder straps of my pack. 

The next day we head out to the Sùrtana again, this time approaching from the west. We pass the massif of Punta Cusidore with its trad climbs on arêtes that reach nearly 3,000 feet above the olive orchards below. Once again the comparisons filter in and I can’t help but think this feels like driving Highway 395 under the late afternoon shadow of the High Sierra—that is, before Los Angeles stole all the water in the 1930’s and turned Owens Valley into scrubland and high desert. We’ll be living there in three weeks, and I promise Caroline that the comparisons will soon reverse, and it will be impossible to forget this incomparable place. That, and we must learn enough Italian so we can understand the Italian-only trad guidebook so we can one day get up some of the classics on the Punta Cusidore and its lip-smacking arête jutting into the sky.