Gran Mesule, 3500m, Valle Aurine 9/5/09

Necky drive up in Luciano's camper, Italian stylee as we drive past a sign saying "no campers" and spend the rest of the ascent convincing ourselves that ours is not technically a camper in the strictest terms cos it doesn't look exactly the same as the one displayed on the sign. The road is, nonetheless a tight squeeze. We bed down for the night. Alarm at 3am again. We are first off. Fairy lights are soon following us up. Snow is porridge. More than 70 people make it to the summit! One of the late season classics of the area. Despite the high temps, last night's fresh pow makes for some superb turns high up, & the lower slopes are so compacted and tracked out that they've stayed well ski-able all the way back to the camper...which is now surrounded by half a dozen other campers...Italian stylee.

Pizzo Rosso di Predoi, Valle Aurine 8/5/2009

Well, this weekend saw us hit the road Friday in Luciano's camper. 4 hours later we were at the end of Valle Aurine on the Italian side of the Ital/Aus border.
3 am alarm call. 4 am skis on packs and heading up the beautiful valley to the first snows. We start skinning at 1700m with no hint of re-freeze. Massive avalanches and still more to come down as we head into side valley leading up to the hut. Finally get some re-freeze at 2600m but the day's not going well for me. My skin won't stick, and then I discover I've lost a buckle of my new Dynafits!
The day's heating up & we're still a long way off the summit. Ski crampons on before a steep head wall which leads to the glacier above, but horribly wind-loaded slope gets too freaky, so we decide to leave it and I head down to look for my buckle. No sign of it so we skin upwards again towards the second, lower and safer objective of Cima del Vento, arriving on the summit in pretty much white-out and pretty beat up, as we've now done 1800m of vertical. We ski the arete and superb corn down the first 400m. From there on down it's total porridge, & we're just losing height pretty much all the way down to road.