Overnight in a secluded mountain hut (it was FREE)

So we said this trip was all about trying new things and getting out of our comfort zone and that's exactly what I'm doing today. Yeah, okay. Okay. And I'm excited but also a bit apprehensive. But would the apprehension be worth it? We're leaving the van in this questionable car park at the base of Col d'Alana, a 2,500 meter tall mountain in the center of the Italian Dolomites, all in the effort of hopefully spending the night in a bivaco. A bivaco or bivy is a high altitude shelter used for refuge for anyone that may need it. Since they are usually set up high in the mountains they can offer some pretty ridiculous backdrops. And as you will see after our nearly 1,000 meter climb to the peak, ours has quite a lot of character. Seeing snippets of the mountains already has given me so much hope that the view from the top is gonna be insane. We've just caught sight of the bivaco for the first time and it looks amazing but it's so far away. One of my biggest worries when doing this was not knowing if there's going to be someone already there so we're not able to stay and we're so close now so I'm just praying that there isn't anyone there. I'm so happy we're here and the views, oh my god. Holy cow, I am drenched in sweat. That walk was testing at times, it was very very steep but what we did actually was put on a podcast on Mitchell's phone out loud and to be honest that actually really helped I think because I was able to just submerge myself in the podcast rather than think about every step and how far we got. How did you find it? That was hard work. Anytime I've got extra weight on my back it just feels so much heavier, like I need to lose some weight so then I can put more weight in my backpack or make it not feel as bad. Yeah we've still got a lot to learn with these backpacks that's for sure. Felt like I just had one warm blanket on me the whole time and now I'm wet through but anyway we're gonna go for a walk before we go in and just see what's around this point because there's no one here which is amazing. So there's two buildings up here, one of them is like a little church which I find a little bit creepy that you're sleeping next to it, I don't know why, but this behind me is actually the bavaco named Brigata Alpina Cador at 2462 meters which is actually bonkers to be honest because that's a lot higher than we've ever really slept before and it still feels like you're low when you're in the Dolomites. But anyway I saw something about the church which I really want to see if we can still do. Can you get married? Why is that what you're expecting? Yeah it might be my only chance. Hey this would be sick, imagine if I'd set up like a proposal up here and then your family was up here and you just got married at the church. Thanks for crushing my dreams, oh my god this looks creepy. Wow this is amazing, wow. But anyway this isn't what I was trying to show you but it's around this way come on How sick is that? I don't know what that signifies, we're probably going to get rocked, like the mi5 is probably going to turn off. That's amazing. How sick is that? Marv come up here, wow this is mad, come up here. I thought it went on, oh my god what the hell, I thought it went on, I thought it was a ridge. No this is the peak, so this is the peak of Calderwana. I didn't know that. That is so cool. How crazy is the sunset going to be up here? I really hope so. Oh if we're on our own up here for sunset. Oh my god it's going to be the best day ever. Oh man. This has honestly like blown away any expectation I had and we've not even gone inside yet, I hope it's okay. Just a bit of behind the scenes, we nearly called this off because Marv wasn't feeling too well, what do you reckon to that? Yeah I'm really glad that I've done it now. That's what I mean, I didn't give any thought to it because I didn't think I'd be doing it and now that we're here I'm so happy that we're here. You're gonna have to excuse the slight nudity, I've had to take my top off because it's too wet for me to wear and whilst the sun's out I thought it was best. But I'm excited to go in, so I want to take you in. You've never been in one of these before? No I've never been in anything like this before, I've not even seen in it yet, so I'm scared, I'm excited. That was two emotions going fast. Oh wow. Okay first thought, I'm creeped out. Why is the, why is the men on the... Wow, oh it smells very woody. It smells old, there's a few candles. Wow, I wish I understood all this right now. What the hell's in that bottle? Yeah is that urine? Is that urine? I don't know, there's something floating in it. Is it oil? Nah, no one's carrying oil all the way up here are they? I dare you sniff it. I dare you to sniff it. I don't know if I want to. Go on. If it expands when I open it, it's wee. That's not oil Marv, that's wee, that's definitely wee. Why is someone weeing? Oh it smells a bit like apple juice. What? It smells alcoholic. Oh. It does, it smells it's like a mixture of wine and beer. Oh. I don't know if I dare. Oh is it um. Is it white wine? Oh what's the thing that's common here and I told you about it in the shop, which is literally a mixture of, oh I can't think of the name. I'm gonna have to google it. Maybe that's what one of these signs means. Yeah we'll have to translate it. Oh yeah something offered. Grazie. Ah wow this place is sick. This is nicer than the one that I stayed at. Okay so we're going into the bedroom quarters now. It's very dark. Oh it's very dark. Oh okay no light. Yeah there's not gonna be electrical here. Right I'm gonna have to grab a torch Marv. Yeah okay. Okay I don't know. I'm gonna be freaked out in the morning when I wake up here. I'm gonna be so confused. Let me get a torch. Oh it's um very rustic. Yeah. I mean they feel comfy. Yeah I want the top too for sure. Oh man how good will it be if no one else turns up here. I think there's blankets inside here as well. Yeah. Oh wow. There's camping gas and everything. What? Pasta. Cards. We didn't even need to bring cards. Oh my god. A little coffee. Wow I can't believe these things are here. What's it? A little bar. A little lighter. Another lighter. Oh man I'm well impressed with this. Is that? Empty. That is amazing. Right we need to get our sleeping bags on these backpacks so we claim them now. Quick time. I'm just absolutely blown away by this. I can't believe things like this exist and are free and they're not trashed. There's no graffiti. There's no drugs or needles or anything like that. It's all just yeah here for like from the kindness of other people and I can't believe that we're able to stay here tonight. It's going to be such a change. I want to go around and read everything that's on this on the walls as much as I can because it's very cool that people have left stuff. Yeah I'm so excited for tonight now. Doesn't it? Yeah. We're cooking inside and we're both starving. We've decided to go with some fancy pesto whilst coming up here and also some fancy pasta. We've gone with fresh pasta because it only takes two to four minutes to boil so which is ideal for gas. Although we are going to have to cook it in two batches because there's so much pasta for so little Jap oil but we need to get this on because I'm getting grumpy. Yeah. Is this what pasta's meant to look like and we've just been fed like processed crap in England? It's just fresh pasta. It's how the other half live. Is it that skinny? Shit innit. It tastes like there's half the pesto and the pasta's still in the water. Like it's quite bland but it's good. It's edible. So we've come to sit up at the summit to soak up the last little bit of sunlight. No it's going to be so cold once that sun goes. I can already feel it. But a little fact, we're not normally good at this so I hope you appreciate this. From where we're sat we can see the two highest peaks in the Dolomites being Marmalada and Monticeveta which I thought was quite interesting because I don't think there'll be many other locations like this where you can see them so well. Yeah and the fact that there's glacier on top of Marmalada is pretty cool. Yeah I hope I'm right about that. We were just talking about the fact that the towns below now in the valley have just completely lost sunlight now and like just thinking how that would be living there and losing the sunlight way before the sun actually even sets, especially in the winter, how like rough that'll be. Yeah their sunset is like five o'clock. In the summer? In the summer. So you can imagine when the sun drops down that'd be so depressing. Okay so I was telling Phibbs Monticeveta is I think the fourth highest but Anteleo which you can also see from here is the second highest but it is further in the distance. You can see a lot of mountains is the point. Yeah but also in front of Anteleo is the hotel where we got water in our camping video which I thought was a fun fact. We didn't know that we could see that until about an hour ago. That's amazing. Oh it's getting colder. You can feel it can't you? It's like someone's opened the fridge. See you tomorrow morning. Wow. That is crazy, look at the sunbeam across the mountain. My eyes hurt. I can't get over this It's so amazing and it's just us up here. We hope. We hope. There's still a little bit of time. Yeah but right now it's just us and it's just honestly breathtaking like everywhere you look it's just gorgeous. Martha's parents just happened to video call while the sun was setting so she couldn't miss the opportunity to show them where we are right now but I think the video speaks for themselves. This is absolutely incredible. There is not a cloud in the sky and there is just layers of colour going through the sky now. It's like blue into purple, orange, yellow, back into the blue of the sky. Amazing. With there being absolutely no cloud coverage at the minute I'm hoping the stars are going to be insane. There's like 50% of the moon tonight so I think there's going to be a window where the moon's not too bright at about 10 o'clock where we could get some really nice stars so we're going to hang around until that point and see what we can see. Genuinely if you're ever in the Dolomites and you fancy something like this just go for it. We're going to be on our own tonight and there's not many opportunities where you can sleep on the top of a mountain like this for free. I mean a helicopter just came past us, there was a tour helicopter and I can't imagine the money that they have paid just to watch the sunset at exactly the same level that we have and we haven't paid a penny for it and we'll also get sunrise in the morning. You even get the view from the window, it's warm in here, quick. We've just got the tiniest bit of light left in here before it's completely pitch black so we're staying in here until we see the stars come out. We've got some chocolate and we have got 4G internet so it's a little bit different to last time so I think we're just gonna watch some YouTube and chill out and yeah just wait for the stars. It's literally getting darker as we speak. Thankfully the clear sky did not disappoint us. Mitch was in his element running around taking photos as the sky lit up whilst I sat back and soaked it all in. I'd not seen a shooting star before this summer so seeing this blew my mind. Thankfully feeling tired from the climb up, the bed was calling my name and I didn't have a chance to think about how creepy it felt before my head hit the pillow and we were off to sleep for an early start the next morning. Well good morning, this coffee is very much needed this morning, let me tell you that. I thought I was gonna sleep completely fine but I was rocking and rolling all night. It was so hot, I literally was sweating all night which you shouldn't really complain about. The beds were so creaky as well so we could hear each other moving but it was probably better than being in a tent. Yeah it was definitely better than being in a tent. And we're up now for the sunrise and it's still pretty beautiful. Yeah I'm just glad we've got this coffee to keep us warm. How you been? What's your thoughts? My thoughts? Yeah. My thoughts are this has been absolutely incredible but now I'm like sort of ready to start getting ready to go because all of the exciting stuff's happened now and also when me and you have had a coffee it's a ticking time bomb. I'll say it once more and then I won't say it again but I can't believe this is free and we're here and we've had this experience all to ourselves just on a random Wednesday and now Thursday and we're able to share these experiences with you so please let us know if you've enjoyed watching this type of video and you enjoy seeing us come and do these sort of things and make sure to subscribe if you do because we'd love to do more of them even though we're a little bit sleep deprived. It's still been amazing. So after I burnt the porridge last time we tried to cook breakfast in the jet boil we've gone with a safer option this time which is peanut butter and jam wraps. Oh it's already ripped off. You might have a bit of jam in your back pocket. Look at that. Absolute masterpiece. Looks like a tampon. That is just pure wrap. Well I've just found what I can only assume is mouse poo inside my bag and Marfa said there was a little hole in the bag of the wraps that we've just had. Which I'm not 100% happy about. That's disgusting. Right well the sun's well and truly up. We're all packed up ready to go. Just done one last sweep up of the entire place because I just inspected the end of the bed and the amount of mouse poo is kind of disgusting. I'm glad we didn't see that last night. Yeah I know. We could hear some rustling last night but I convinced Marfa that it was in the walls and it was a bird or something. I'm glad it's over but what a spot. Yeah what a spot. Right now just the long stretch down to see if there's actually a van for us to get back to. I know this is the bit where I dread the most. Yeah. The whole way back now all I'm going to think about is if the van is okay and still there. Yeah. Right well an hour and a half later we've made it down. Now it's time to see if the van's all okay. Well it's still here which is a start. Let's see if it's been broken into. Well it looks okay. Well that's that then and now we're off down to the coast. So if you want to see that give us a subscribe. Give this video a like if you've enjoyed it. Marfa can finish it off. And yeah we'll catch you in the next one. You said everything. See you in a bit.