Monte Adamello and Ardennes

Sometimes things don’t go as planned. Bennie and I had originally agreed to go climbing with an acquaintance in Chamonix, France. But due to lack of time he was ultimately unable to participate. It can happen, so we started looking for a new plan. This plan turned into a few days of climbing with Bennie’s guide/trainer. We wanted to do some climbing on the Tacul and try to do the Aiguille Verte of 4122m. This plan also fell apart because the cable to Grand Montets closed. Once again we had to come up with something new.

After a lot of thinking and requesting information in various Alpine regions, we decided to take a chance and drive to Monte Adamello. The Adamello is 3539 meters high in the Italian region of Trentino. After a long drive we arrived in Edolo, a town at the foot of the mountain. Because we were tired of the journey, we decided to eat a pizza and then drive the last part to our sleeping place.

Bernina massif from the Bernina pass

Arrived in Edolo

We had parked the camper the night before at Ponte del Guat, at about 1500 meters altitude, so that we could start the route straight away in the morning. So we got up early the next morning and headed towards Rifugio Gnutti at 2166 meters. We had read the weather forecast carefully and saw that we should not leave too early. Until 10:30 there would still be a lot of clouds above 2000 meters and some precipitation early in the morning in the valley. So we started at 6:20 am. On the way to this hut we encountered a lot of snow. After a short break at the hut we continued our way towards the couloir that leads to the pass. Normally this is a Via Ferrata where you can walk up via chains. Now it was a snow wall of about 55 degrees with soft snow. Tracing through this wall was extremely difficult. Every step up we sank another 30 cm. This caused us to lose so much time that we started to run behind schedule. We continued to the col. We arrived here at 3:00 PM. That’s way too late, and then we still had 300 meters of elevation to the top. We could have done that, but then we would have had to sleep in a bivouac at an altitude of 3300 meters, as we were not sufficiently acclimatized for that. We tried to climb to a rock pillar, but sank up to our hips in the snow. It seemed like 30 degrees on top of the mountain. After a brief discussion we turned around and started the descent. Using a few techniques we quickly descended until we reached the snow wall again. We went down there quietly on a short rope, but we did not feel safe. The sun was out for hours and things could just shift and we would be swept away. We descended steadily and luckily we arrived safely at the foot of the mountain. We slogged down like a rocket through the snow and back to the car. Along the way we regularly sank up to our hips in the soft snow, shouting words that are not worth repeating. But hey, everything is training, so to speak. All in all we had a fantastic day, climbing for 14 hours and having to work our way up and down very hard. We didn’t reach the top, but the cooperation and training made the day absolutely great for us. We decided to drive back north the next day and go rock climbing in Belgium. The conditions are too bad for another attempt on another mountain.

Start of the route

At the Gnutti shelter

We work our way up trough the soft snow

Stunning landscape

Rock passage up the ridge

Corno Miller 3373 meter 

Dramatic skies

Corno Ugolini

Summit of the Monte Adamelleo 3539 meter, so close…