Monte Viglio - first solo conquest

What epilogue for a beginning?

A smile is stamped on my face, but more than a smile it is a contraction of my features. I open my mouth to breathe in all the air I can. The smile, instead, is the expression of the effort made up to that moment. The physical effort is at the same time a psychological effort, a use of mental resources I didn't think I had. And while my face contracts into this grimace of pain and happiness, the first tears start to come. I can't hold them back, they burst out like an unstoppable avalanche, they sweep everything away, shattering what is left of my battered soul...

Prologue

It is four in the morning, I hear my two-year-old daughter whimpering in her cot. She has had a fever for a few days and it shows no sign of coming down. But the whimper fades, shapeless, into the night. I float between sleep and waking, paying only half attention to that whimper. In the dark the sound takes on a material form, it is almost angular, undoubtedly irritating, and it goes on until I hear my partner get up to go and look.
After a few moments of silence I hear her voice emerge, indistinct: she is calling me. The fever is high, just as high as the anxiety that has been building up for days over little Elisa's nasty cold.

Good..., or rather, bad!

In my head everything happens in the indefinite instant of a click. The decision is made automatically.  I sit on the edge of the bed, I rub my face with my hands to get the blood moving in the capillaries. We're going to the hospital.
I can no longer bear my wife's anxiety, nor that of the family, which for days has been pressing for an explanation of Elisa's prolonged illness.
I am not an easy-going man and at certain moments I even come across as rather gruff, if not downright brutal, but it is only an appearance and Valeria knows it. She always says that “a barking dog never bites”. I don't like this metaphor, but in part it fits me like a glove. So, rather brusquely, I tell her to get dressed and get the baby ready, because the moment has come to find a solution to this situation.

It certainly looks like shaping up to be a dreadful day.  The way the whole situation has come about is just the icing on the cake. I have recently opened a new bookshop and I have given everything I have to get the business off the ground. These have been the hardest months of work of my life. My body, but above all my mind, are worn out by tiredness and by a strange kind of repression caused by my relentless work commitments.  It is the kind of exhaustion that builds up when you sleep only a few hours: it makes you fragile right down to the bone. A tiredness so deep-rooted and profound that in the morning, when you wake up, you don't even have the strength to open your eyelids. The brain still works, but the body stubbornly refuses to respond.
Only a parent can go beyond the limit of this fatigue; some inexplicable force has brought us out in the middle of the night.

When we go outside it is still dark, but the dry winter cold doesn't bother us too much.
After about an hour we are already at A&E. Elisa is wide awake, she almost seems better. At reception we are given a green priority code, so like good citizens we settle down to wait for a paediatrician to examine the baby. It is already five in the morning, and through the waiting-room window the faint glow of dawn begins to filter in. That light, that sky of pastel shades shifting from orange to pink to pale blue, projects my thoughts towards the memory of those mountains I love so much. But for this Sunday it really looks as though I will have to give up the exploration I had been hoping for so much.

I look at my wife lovingly keeping the baby entertained and I feel her strangely distant, as though she belonged to a different world. But perhaps, more simply, it is I who belong to a world different from hers, from the world of people who are, so to speak... “normal”... this is exactly what I was saying, in fact: I have a difficult character, at times moody and withdrawn.
She serenely manages to express her being a mother, whereas I, most of the time, can't manage to feel either a father or a husband the way perhaps I ought to. Most of the time I still have a rebellious spirit and I constantly escape classification.

My thoughts are interrupted when at last we are called...

Departure

We are back home again. The doctor has examined the baby. He was very meticulous, but in the end he smiled at us kindly and said it was just an ordinary cold. As I watch the doctor, he seems to be talking to me in slow motion, everything unfolds like an endless action replay. And as he talks and explains that ours was just the anxiety of young, inexperienced parents... these words have the effect of a cold shower, I almost feel as if the world were turning upside down. Everything seems to take on a grotesque look, bordering on the paradoxical. The doctor says goodbye, sending us home with a hearty pat on the back and every good wish for the lovely baby.
These are the moments when you feel silly, clumsy, almost ridiculous for having pushed the whole knot of family tensions to breaking point.
This cold will clear up on its own.

It is seven in the morning.  Sleep has vanished by now, so all that's left is to decide how to spend this day that started too early and on such strange premises.

I don't think about it for long, the mental process is simple, it looks like a mathematician's operation. Two plus two equals four. Free time equals mountain. So even though it is already very late I decide to set off for Monte Viglio.
This is the fourth time I have tried to reach its summit, and each time I have been driven back by the snow or by awful visibility.
So... I set off again for yet another attempt. But this time the plan is even crazier than the previous ones: to go up from the Val Granara residential complex towards the Circolo dei Sassoni, to meet the long ridge coming from Filettino and climb to the summit.

So, leaving my wife and daughter, partly without remorse, I decide to set off for the Monti Simbruini.
It is the beginning of March; over the last few weeks a lot of snow has fallen and in part I already know what awaits me: deep snow and a lot of hard work. Despite this I feel no fear, no dread. I am driven by an almost irrepressible need for physical and mental release. Mine is a classic case: like other people my age, I have reached the threshold of thirty-five with a fine load of repressed desires. But obviously, when you choose one road you rule out all the others, so there is no point in going on about it.

For this Sunday, which began at first light, once again I have the chance to live yet another of my little hiking escapes.
I arrive in the Val Granara without even realising it. I drive as if in a hypnotic state, so much so that the car almost seems to get there by itself.
When I get out of the car only the biting cold wakes me from the torpor and the trance I had fallen into while driving.

I get out of the car; on the ground the snow has frozen, and when I tread on it it crunches, making a pleasant noise under the soles of my boots. I rub my hands together, it is a wonderful feeling, the icy cold gives me the thrill of... of being so... alive. When I look up at the mountain, in front of me rises the broad western flank of Monte Viglio. On the left the line of the ridge is broken by the great rocky tooth of the Gendarme, on the right the rocky slopes of Monte Viglio and the wide Circo dei Sassoni.  At the foot of this low mountain mass, the immense, sleeping beech wood so typical of the Apennines.

I get dressed quickly and in less than ten minutes I am already immersed in nature.
From the Val Granara I can only guess what my route will be. To be on the safe side I have even got hold of the IGM map of the area. But I am still very inexperienced, and the lack of a precise route will call for a greater effort.
But what route, what itinerary? I am still a beginner and can do nothing but improvise a route among the firs and the dog-rose bushes; then, slowly, the vegetation changes. The trees grow taller, there are tall beeches everywhere, covered in dry, dark leaves, partly covered by snow. The silence of the wood is broken by the sudden fall of little pieces of ice that built up over the last few days on the branches and dead leaves. In the undergrowth the snow hasn't frozen and you still sink a good twenty or thirty centimetres into the snowpack. I often turn round to study the trail I have made on the way up. One of the rules I have set myself is always to come back by the same way I went up, and to do this I keep forcing myself to look at where I have been. Every stop is a chance to breathe and get my breath back, to open my far too heavy jacket and let the sweat evaporate...

Getting lost...

I studied the map for weeks; now that I am, as it were, lost in the living heart of nature, this crumpled piece of paper looks almost unreadable to me. I try to make sense of the curves of the surrounding relief and to match every contour line to a profile, a height, a hill.

I am still deep in the beech wood and I try to gain as much height as possible, but I soon find I am forced to move south: I have to cross a low hill to get into the wide glacial cirque, the Circolo dei Sassoni. Over the hill I find myself in a broad clearing from which I can make out the direction to follow better.
To the south a spur covered in trees is my landmark. I will pass on its right, but first I still have to get through the beech wood.
Time, space, one step or ten thousand no longer seem to make any sense. With every laborious movement I lose all sense of time and space. Every movement expands and contracts like an accordion. One step or ten thousand no longer seem to make any sense. The scenery repeats itself. I arrive below the rocky spur; to reach it I have to climb through the thick of the beech wood for about thirty metres. I get lost in the tangle of branches, I sink into the snow, for every two steps forward I take one back. Then all of a sudden I come out on top of the low spur. The landscape, wild and desolate, makes me think, on a small scale, of the remote areas of Canada or Alaska. The greyness of the day, the light of this lifeless February, heighten the feeling of intense cold. I have a thermos of hot tea with me. I stop to savour the landscape. So intense is the emotion of being there that years later I will still keep the memory as though only a few days had gone by: here I am, lost in this endless wood, in this landscape without roads or paths, in this scenery whose only acceptable point of reference, the only goal it marks, is the summit of a mountain.

I am still too wrapped up and this makes me sweat quite excessively. I keep a few clumsy self-timer photos as an everlasting token of those moments. My face, gaunt and tense, has the red flush of physical effort. There is no smile, and yet, I remember it well, it was a subtle and priceless pleasure to be there at that moment. I was full of satisfaction and at the same time emptied of all thoughts of everyday commitments.

The stop, for a tea that is still good and hot, doesn't last long. On the summit two dark shadows are moving about; I don't think they have noticed me: at about 1700 metres I am still deep in the beech wood and the two hikers are unlikely to be able to see me.

Through the bare trees I can see the line of the ridge rising to the top: it has the pure white of the snow, it follows the light line of freedom. Once I reach the ridge, I think, the climb will certainly be easier. No more questions in the search for the route, no more fighting against the thick of tangled branches. No more needless worries. The clean line of the ridge will take me straight to the summit without new detours, without fears.

A matter of perspective...

When the last trees thin out I have practically reached the ridge. From here I can see the whole immense beech wood I have come through so far, I can better measure the effort, every single branch I had to climb over, every single tree I had to get round. From here I can recover a sense of time that I had lost in the wood.
Up above, the two figures are still moving about on the summit; they seem to be standing still, but I can't make out their outlines clearly, I am still a long way below and before I reach them I will have to work hard.

I know that ridges swept by the wind are often free of snow. Or in some cases the frozen snow is as solid as concrete and with a good pair of crampons you go up without too much effort.
However, the ridge is less sharp than I imagined; snow has the power to round off shapes. Against all expectations I still find soft snow and I sink several centimetres into the snowpack. I push one foot in front of the other with more and more effort and think back to all those mountain stories I have read over the last few months.

That is how my adventure began. I have always read a lot, above all fiction, from science fiction to the contemporary classics. In recent years I had sensed that faint taste of the implausible present in made-up stories. It was an aftertaste that, as I read, became more and more unpleasant. I had the impression that all this could not really enrich me, but rather helped to increase my already innate confusion.
I began to look for accounts of things that had really happened, or biographies of people who had really lived, to satisfy my thirst for curiosity.
Among the many books I had to hand in the bookshop I came across one of the first collections by the famous South Tyrolean mountaineer Hans Kammerlander: “Malato di Montagna”.
Reading mountain stories I discovered that the marriage between thought, reflection and physical effort was perfect. This could only happen in a natural setting, and the wilder nature was, the more I would be able to explore the recesses of my soul and my thoughts.
It was a balanced and stimulating combination: reading, thinking, physical activity.
The commitments of a family, the birth of a daughter and the responsibilities of work had confronted me with the harshness of existence more than any invented or reported story could ever have done. Faced with this reality I felt deeply unfit for social life.
I sensed instinctively that my relationship with the mountains could give me the chance to think about my – how shall I put it... place in the world. And indeed there is no other natural place like the mountains that can give your personal problems back their right proportions. From high on a ridge, above a steep, plunging slope, you can look down on a little village like Filettino and understand that all of life's problems are just tiny specks of dust of no importance whatsoever.

Through the bare trees I can see the line of the ridge rising to the top: it has the pure white of the snow, it follows the light line of freedom. Once I reach the ridge, I think, the climb will certainly be easier. No more questions in the search for the route, no more fighting against the thick of tangled branches. No more needless worries. The clean line of the ridge will take me straight to the summit without new detours, without fears.

The summit...

Veiled by a blanket of white cloud, the sky can't seem to make up its mind to open. A light wind blows from the south; for March it isn't very cold. And in fact when I finally reach the line of the ridge I find that the snow isn't frozen at all; on the contrary, you can see the first red patches of magnesite absorbed by the snow, the sign that the snow is inevitably melting.
From the ridge I can see the outline of the summit cross more and more clearly; the two hikers have certainly come up from the Valico di Serra Sant'Antonio and are still moving about around the cross. I hope to catch them up, maybe to exchange a few words and share a few mountain stories with them.
There are about three hundred metres of height gain left to the summit. Roughly speaking I am at 1850 metres and I am already looking forward to the view I will enjoy from the top.

Instead of bringing me closer to the summit, though, the ridge seemed to have taken me further away from it. The snow, still very soft, kept hindering my steps. Because of a sharp pain in my left hip I had to stop more and more often. This is what happens to the Sunday hiker who, without any training, decides to climb more than a thousand metres of height gain in deep snow.

The optical effect of perspective had flattened the depth of field. The ridge was in fact turning out, before my eyes, to be much longer than expected. Three steps and I had to stop. The pain was getting stronger and stronger, unbearable. There is no turning back now: there was still all the time in the world and no technical difficulty on the climb: no tricky moves, no route-finding problems. All I had to do was put up with the pain and keep going.

When the pain becomes insistent and unbearable you can't help drawing the parallel with the difficulties of existence in general. Your mind sets off on a merry-go-round of abstract thoughts. Conquering a summit lends itself wonderfully to the comparison with life. You can do nothing but keep going. It takes endurance, stubbornness, control.

At 2050 m I meet the ridge coming from Monte Pratiglio. The view is wonderful, but I keep my head down and don't pay it much attention: I am tired and entirely focused on managing the pain in my hip in my head. I look up and see the distinct shape of the summit cross. It is huge, and at last I begin to understand its real proportions.

Step by step, and with an almost exasperating slowness, I reach the little round plateau at the foot of the summit. I look up: only the last 20-metre pull to the cross is left.
I look more closely at the cross and, to my amazement, I seem to be living a kind of epiphany. Now the tears start to flow on their own, they are  unstoppable. I start talking like a madman, I am alone, and I exclaim: - It's blue, my God, the cross is blue...

As I climb the last few metres to the cross I sob convulsively; an unstoppable river of thoughts and memories resurfaces into consciousness, into the vivid light of awareness, and all together they take shape, composing a single, perfect image of my existence.
Until that moment I had looked at that cross as a dark dot on the top of the mountain; perhaps, with extreme rationalism, I had seen it as a geographical point on the map. Now before my eyes there materialised a symbol charged with all past efforts and every possible  future expectation. I am not a religious man... and yet that cross, that symbol, could only convey exactly what needed to be conveyed at that moment. For an unbeliever like me that cross, of that electric blue so bright, so unexpected and wonderful, was taking on, in my mind, meanings beyond anything I could imagine.
The tears pour out like a river in flood.

From an upper pocket I take out a photo of my daughter and wedge it on the cross. The real meaning of this gesture still escapes me. Perhaps all this is just for my outsized ego. The cross, the wonderful view, reaching this goal, these few hours alone serve only myself. A small thing, when I think that to this daughter I am devoting my nights, my days, my time, my life. Being here... perhaps... I have earned it... at least this time.

With effort and stubbornness  I had achieved the goal of gaining the summit of that mountain. Not only had I managed to reach it from the most tiring side, on one of those days that seemed to bode nothing good. I had also managed to make that conquest clarify for me the meaning  of my daily toil. From the summit of daily sacrifice you can look back on your own existence with satisfaction and pride. That's what a summit is. That's what life is.