It's dark on the glacier.
I finish fastening my crampons, and the title of Hermann Buhl's book comes to mind—the epic ascent of Nanga Parbat, the "naked mountain," because its walls are so steep that not even snow can hold.
Three in the morning, Obere Plattje at 3,277 meters, right where the Monte Rosa Glacier begins.
Fil and I left the comfortable Monterosa Hut about forty minutes ago. We can't see it anymore, hidden behind the rocky shoulder we just crossed. Below, the flickering glow of the headlamps of the few roped parties that followed us on the route appears and disappears in rhythm with their steps.
I raise my eyes to the night, and the light from my headlamp gently dissolves into nothingness, having nothing left to reflect against.
It's a moonless night, with an infinity of stars above us. There are so many that the main constellations can no longer be distinguished.
I smile at the thought of the effort humans have made over time to organize that primordial chaos into forms of fantasy, the limited vision of the sky as a collection of constellations. Much more beautiful like this tonight—so many stars that no one would dare try to impose order.
The rope between me and Fil is long, with a couple of knots in the middle, as we approach this highly crevassed section of the glacier, searching for the best path through.
Given the distance between us, the beams of our headlamps cut through the darkness separately. I try my best to help by illuminating where it might be most useful… but the problem is, where to look? Where to go?
Left, then right, then left again. We move forward, stop, turn back, walking along small ridges between open crevasses, crossing a few snow bridges. Despite last night’s scouting and our conversation with the hut manager, studying the photos of the route, the trail is just invisible in this darkness, and Fil has his hands full.
We try again, turning back and attempting the right side once more.
Below, two headlamps are approaching, moving towards us. They’ve watched us zigzagging through the darkness, searching for a path that doesn’t exist, and are following us.
Fil senses the right way through—great! Now I can see the footsteps in the snow too, we’re headed in the right direction. I mark a waypoint on the GPS, in case we need it for the return.
Finally, free of this ice maze, we speed upward, where the sky is starless, blocked by the black silhouette of Nordend on the left and Dufour on the right.
In between, a few stars dip low into our field of view—it’s the Silbersattel at 4,517 meters, the “Silver Saddle.”
Nice name, a bit magical, just like the one on Nanga Parbat, described by Buhl.
And it’s still dark on the glacier.
Far to the right of the Monte Rosa Glacier, the trail has brought us below the Sattel at an altitude of 4,359 meters, and it’s now clear that we’re on the route for the West Ridge of Dufour.
The Dufour. In the end, it’s drawn us in, like a magnet.
We could still rejoin the path to Nordend, but at this point, Fil suggests the possibility of directly attempting Monte Rosa’s highest peak, 4,632 meters.
We know the conditions of the route and the weather are perfect, but this time, I feel I’m not acclimatized enough. Once above 4,000 meters, I struggle with the ascent. "Fil, I’m not sure. For Dufour via the ridge, I need to be at my best… maybe it’s better to turn back and head towards Nordend, or traverse to rejoin the path higher up…" “Come on, Andre, you can do it! How many times have we done this? Trust me… I know you. Trust me.”
As I listen to Fil, leaning slightly on my ice axe, I want to overcome this hesitation, to push a limit, the confidence level my mind has set for Dufour, a certain physical condition, which I now feel I don’t have.
Or maybe I’m afraid I don’t, I don’t even know anymore.
Almost without realizing it, we start again… the first steps feel like a leap of faith. Then the slope steepens, and I dig the front points of my crampons firmly into the ice, while Fil shortens the rope between us.
And off we go again, one step after another. Slowly, but we’re moving again.
Just above the Sattel, the ridge rises, at first snowy and increasingly steep, then turning rocky at an elevation of around 4,500 meters, where we have to scramble over broken rocks.
We continue along the ridge, navigating snow and mixed terrain, until we reach the fore-summit. Here, the ridge narrows again, becoming rocky with blocks and ledges.
After climbing a steep II° rock step on the left, along a faint gully that leads to a notch, we face the final vertical rock wall. To overcome it, we’ll have to climb a chimney—also rated II°—again to the left of the ridge line.
Fil goes ahead, climbing the chimney. It’s a balancing act, and I watch him move gracefully on the front points of his crampons.
Then it’s my turn. Fil belays me from above. I free the rope from the carabiner three-quarters of the way up the chimney, retrieve the quickdraw, and make my way out successfully.
My feet land on the summit rock next to Fil, with earth and sky meeting all around us.
Lying in my comfortable bunk at the Monterosa Hut, it's 3:00 p.m., and I think that exactly twelve hours ago, we were fastening our crampons under the stars.
Now, I hope to get some sleep. Climbing so high, only to return from where we came.
It’s not about accomplishing something; it’s not about telling the story of having done it, because in reality, the mountain only matters to those who wish it to.
It’s about wanting to experience it for yourself, to feel it firsthand, because certain sensations can’t be transmitted or inherited from someone else’s experience; they can only be lived.
I think back to the summit, which defines the mountain in our eyes, and toward which we are naturally drawn. But it’s on the mountain’s slopes, on its paths at first, then climbing the moraines, the glacier, the rock, and the ridge, where our ascent truly unfolds.
On the summit, in those brief moments, I’m not sure if the predominant feeling is satisfaction or the pragmatic awareness that you’re only halfway through the journey and now have to make your way back down.
It’s a mixed sensation of deep respect and, at the same time, a desire to merge with the space that surrounds us, to dominate the void from above, perhaps in an attempt to exorcize it.
I’m glad I got through that crisis, and grateful to Fil for helping me overcome it.
We reached the summit in six hours, considering we spent at least half an hour wandering through the crevasses searching for the route. We did more than well.
I watch Dent Blanche filling the horizon, framed by the light wood of the window. Then I collapse into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Outside the Monte Rosa Hut, at dusk, the refuge looks like a brightly lit spaceship, traversed by the luminous staircase spiraling upwards behind the glass.
"Stairway to Heaven," wow, if only I had my acoustic Gibson here—the intro arpeggio would sound just right.
On the terrace, a mountaineer fills his thermos with hot tea and then pauses, gazing at Dufour.
He’ll climb it tomorrow—you can tell by the way he looks at it. I see myself in him—I was him yesterday.
A girl taps on her phone, her black hair tied back in a ponytail. She smiles at me, we greet each other, and her eyes are dark and deep, contrasting with the bright openness of her smile.
It’s not very warm, but she insists on sitting barefoot on that rock. Now she, too, is silent—her fingers no longer motivated to dance swiftly across the keyboard. Tomorrow, she’ll descend to the valley, her destination materializing in the western profile of the Breithorn and the Matterhorn.
I forget about the Gibson I don’t have, and suddenly I’m once again immersed in this silence. I feel it—it’s mine.
From the outside, it seems the same, but it’s different from everyone else’s—from the mountaineer’s, from the girl’s.
I think every person is also a silence. Each of us, as we grow, learns to live with our own, each with the silence that defines us.
Dufour is illuminated by the sunset. You can clearly see the route, the Sattel, the fore-summit, and the jagged ridge that looks like a staircase reaching for the first evening stars in the sky.
The wind is blowing cold now, and the girl stands up and quickly returns to the hut.
“There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold. And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”
This morning, in the first rays of sunlight, everything sparkled—the ice crystals in the snow, the tip of the ice axe tucked under the strap of my backpack, the fragments of rock beside the summit cross.
So many little glimmers where, for a moment, I found refuge, before lifting my gaze again to face that horizon, so extraordinarily vast and open.
by Andrea
