It’s day 2 of our 2012 trip to the Alps. Unfortunately our fourth man Conrad had to cancel the trip due to a rebelling tooth, so it was only Friederike, Philipp and I who met in Villeneuve in the Italian Aosta valley on Friday. And Aldo, our Peruvian guide (who lives in Münster).
After sorting our equipment, we packed a daypack and took a taxi to Pont at 1950 m and started to walk to our first base, Rifugio Vittorio Emmanuele (2735 m) at the foot of Gran Paradiso, Italy’s highest mountain. Here we were going stay for two nights, and we were lucky to get a room for ourselves which is complete luxury in an overcrowded cottage like this.

We went to bed early Friday night, because at 3.30 our alarm went off and at 4.30 we were already ascending towards Gran Paradiso with headlamps on – together with between 180 other mountaineers this day.

It was an unusually warm night, and we soon started sweating under our many layers of clothes. After one hour the glacier started, so we took our crampons and climbing harnesses on. The next hours were demanding for me – not acclimatised to the high altitude and approaching a 4-thousander on the second day, but I somehow forced myself to continue.

Shortly after 7 AM we reached the only technically difficult passage at Gran Paradiso (2nd degree climbing), just below the summit. We had to wait at this bottleneck for at least 20 minutes for climbers in front on their way up and others returning from the summit. I enjoyed those minutes as they helped me to restitute and bring down my heart-rate. At 7.45 we reached the top of Italy at 4061 m, gathering around a (O bella Italia!) madonna statue for the summit photo.

As I’m writing this (Saturday, 5 PM) we’re back at the Refugio, just had a power nap and preparing for dinner now. I have to wait until tomorrow until I am back in civilisation to post this.

Stay tuned!