The Author

I was introduced to this beautiful valley for the first time in 1984, a year after my birth. It happened almost at the same time as a sad event which, unusually, took Champoluc to the front pages of newspapers: the mount Crest cableway disaster. Since then, I rapidly learned how to appreciate the beautiful and comforting Ayas Valley, a place almost “made to measure” for any kind of exigency : from trekking to alpinism, from biking to all the other sports. I can honestly say that, having grown up next to Champoluc itself, spending  all the summers of my life there: I had the great opportunity to know the most wonderful people who introduced me to the mountain, who infused me with their burning passion for trekking and alpinism in general. I’ll always be grateful to the guys who carried me “up”, the first times, and I consider it my duty to transfer these old theachings. So, why this website, why now?

During the summer of 2003 I had the occasion to come back to the glacier again, the spendid Monte Rosa which closes my valley. On the morning of 27^th august, for the first time since a long time, I was been really and completely happy... despite a bad fall. I decided, then, to try to express a part of my passion for the mountain with a website, hoping to make people know these feelings. And to know others who, like me, love the purifying strain through which you arrive to the silent loneliness of alpine tops. I’ve already said before how the alpine experience is particularly recommended for a neophyte: mountain can offer freedom and autonomy, asks for courage and firmness, teaches strictness, discipline, self – control and responsibility, presents a satisfaction impossible to describe to those who have not tried them yet. Mountains offer refuge from stress and everyday worries, fortify body and mind, prepare us to face problems without the creeping fear of failing: mountains, using a well known sentence, are the “gym of life”. As for me, they are a refuge after a year of stress and tension.

I have had the luck of learning all these things by the age of six. I’ve never forgotten the joy and the pride I’ve felt when I did my first important trek, the Mount Zerbion, on 27^th August 1991. I think my greatest passion was born that day.

And, notice that I’m still here... It never ended.

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