Where Rock Becomes Madness
PIZZO DELLE OROBIE
2,340 m
TORRIONE DEL PIZZO DELLE OROBIE
2,300 m
PIZZO DELL'ORTO
2,276 m
Alpi - Alpi E Prealpi Bergamasche - Alpi Orobie
With the arrival of autumn, I always feel the urge to plan a few quieter outings than usual.
This is partly to cushion the shock of the first sharp drop in temperatures, and partly to peacefully soak in the blaze of colors that Nature bestows during this magical time of year.
With that premise, I suggested to my partner, Daniela, a purely hiking-oriented loop in the Laghi Gemelli basin, in Valle Brembana.
Yet the real motive behind that seemingly tranquil outing was something else entirely.
About ten years earlier, while completing the traverse from Pizzo delle Orobie to Pizzo dell'Orto, my eyes had first locked onto a magnificent miniature cathedral of stone: the Torrione del Pizzo delle Orobie.
Formally, it is a sub-peak, a natural continuation of the west ridge of Pizzo delle Orobie, yet it possesses lines so proud and slender that it literally steals the scene.
Back then, I had walked over to study it, but ended up judging the climb impossible, held back as much by my still-unseasoned experience as by the scarcity of technical information available on the route.
From that day on, I had kept that little tower tucked away in the most intimate drawer of my heart, waiting for the right moment to open it again.
And I felt that the time had finally ripened this very season.
Galvanized by my recent, intense ascents of Pizzo Rondenino and Pizzo dell'Omo, I decided to try crossing this gem off the short list of peaks still left for me to climb in my home Valle Brembana.
The plan called for a standard hike up to the summit of Pizzo delle Orobie, from which we would descend the west ridge so I could attempt the tower solo.
On paper, the technical difficulties did not exceed UIAA Grade II, but the entire route unfolded across unstable rock with sheer, unrelenting exposure on every side, of an intensity I had rarely encountered in my unroped mountaineering.
Once my alpine interlude was over, we would close the loop by climbing Pizzo dell'Orto, a summit that, along with Pizzo delle Orobie, was still missing from Daniela's list of climbs.
Within a couple of days of making the decision, at seven in the morning, we found ourselves at Baite di Mezzeno, in Roncobello.
We gained elevation quickly toward Passo di Mezzeno and Passo del Tonale beneath a crystal-clear sky, enchanted by the warm autumn hues dressing the landscape.
From there, we reached the summit of Pizzo delle Orobie without a hitch.
From the top, the Torrione del Pizzo delle Orobie revealed itself in all its stern grandeur.
It was a beauty that sent shivers down the spine: vertical entry walls, knife-edge ribs sharp as blades, and the summit castle jutting boldly against the sky.
At the mere sight of it, my nerves began to rise, fed by a very real hazard that immediately presented itself to our eyes.
A light dusting of snow had whitened the peaks a few days earlier, and in the shaded recesses, stubborn patches of ice still lingered.
The connecting ridge dropping from Pizzo delle Orobie toward the tower lay partially in shadow, and the fear of having to beat a retreat before even starting began pressing insistently on my mind.
I immediately stepped to the edge of the summit to scout the entire descent line from above.
As far as the angle allowed me to tell, the key passages looked dry.
We took our first steps downward with extreme caution, and meter by meter we grew confident that the section was passable.
And so it was: almost before I knew it, I stood facing that initial rock wall I had daydreamed about for so many years since our first encounter.
To actually lay hands on the rock, however, I first had to drop into the bottom of a narrow notch, a gully plunged in total shadow.
The snow had spared it, yet across the bare stone stretched a paper-thin, treacherous glaze of verglas, casting another shadow of unease across my thoughts.
The exceedingly rare reports I had dug up firmly warned to tackle the tower only on bone-dry rock, and yet there I stood before it, amid fringes of snow and glints of ice.
The only hold my calm could cling to was the sight of the upper ridge, which at that exact moment sat bathed entirely in sunlight.
I eased myself gingerly down into the notch; my hands were already freezing and my heart was hammering in my chest.
Just above me, perched in a small patch of sun, Daniela tried to steady my nerves, reading the rock and calling out the most logical moves.
At last I touched the wall, and to my great surprise, my fingertips met a generous series of holds and ledges.
I climbed up it briskly, crossed a very brief, delicate level section, and moved on to tackle a second rock step, smaller than the first.
I stood up straight, raised my eyes to look ahead, and froze completely.
I found myself face-to-face with my worst mountain nightmare: a razor-thin ridge, sheer emptiness to the right, sheer emptiness to the left, not a single handhold for security, and total uncertainty about the difficulties waiting beyond.
Making the picture grimmer still, the stone was veiled in a thin coat of frost.
I stood motionless for long moments, my eyes locked onto a tiny tuft of grass whose green blades were trapped beneath an armor of glazed ice.
Instinctively, I lowered my center of gravity, as I always do when I feel the grip of panic rising, and forced silence and stillness into my mind.
I gathered my courage and began inching forward again, staying pressed as flat as possible against the spine of stone.
I knew the crux had yet to reveal itself, and then suddenly there it was right in front of me.
The ridge narrowed to an extreme, tapering down to a series of vertical, knife-sharp flakes.
The first thought that crossed my mind was near disbelief: I wondered how anyone before me had ever managed to cross here, asking myself whether they were nothing short of suicidal madmen.
Edging forward with millimeter precision, however, I noticed that along the left flank of the flakes, just slightly lower and suspended over maximum exposure, ran a series of providential footholds.
Drawing on whatever shred of composure I had left, I weighted my soles as lightly as a feather and tested the soundness of the loose flakes with my hands.
A few steps suspended over the void, and I was across.
Immediately, the thought flashed through my mind that every single move I had just made would have to be reversed on the way back.
Yet I didn't even have time to let that calculation weigh me down: the sight of the final summit block shattered all hope of touching the top.
It looked far too vertical, too exposed, devoid of any holds.
Once again, my thoughts turned to those bold madmen who had come through here before me; it was thanks to their invisible example that I forced myself to take one more step forward, determined to decipher what their eyes had caught and mine were still missing.
And there they were, the moves.
A flake jutting out over sheer emptiness allowed me to gain barely a meter of vertical height.
It was one single, decisive meter that would let me toe into a tiny patch of brown dirt and then claw my hands onto the solid rock of the summit block.
Those were the only features the wall offered; there were no alternatives.
With absolute focus, I executed the sequence of rehearsed moves, and in an instant I was on top.
I didn't grant myself the luxury of savoring the moment: my nerves were still running too high.
I honored my ritual by silently thanking the summit for letting me pass and immediately began the descent, driven by the fear of losing the exact sequence of moves I had just unlocked.
I lowered myself off the summit block, planted my feet back onto the crest of the ridge, and all of a sudden a profound stillness washed over me: I felt with crystal clarity that I was in the right place, at home in the lap of Nature.
Every trace of tension had dissolved, and I could feel that the mountain had accepted me.
I retraced the entire ridge line with a sure-footed stride, no longer perceiving the slightest hint of difficulty.
Before long, I rejoined Daniela, who showed me the candid shots she had taken from afar while I was perched up there: only upon seeing those images did the full scale of what I had just accomplished truly sink in.
The satisfaction was immense, accompanied by the awareness that I had nearly brought a lifetime's journey among my home mountains to completion; the peaks still missing from my list can now be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The morning glided gently to its close, between the ascent of Pizzo dell'Orto and the long trail home, wrapped in absolute solitude and warmed in spirit by the magnificent colors that autumn faithfully bestows upon us each year.