Courmayeur at the end of the 60’s was a small mountain town. I had begin to win a few races and I would train skiing in fresh powder with a person that was trying to conquer the tallest peaks: Walter Bonatti. We were visionaries, looking for the absolute. We would...

The backpack is my home, my caravan, what you want. Just like a snail's shell. Inside there's everything I need, having it beside me is my security, a psychological refuge. When you measure yourself with nature, you never win. It's crazy to say I won such face, I conquered that...

The Mont Blanc yet gleams on high - the power is there The still and solemn power of many sights, And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the calm darkness of the moonless night, In the lone glare of day, the snow descend Upon the Mountain; none...

...Such is the view from the top of Mont Blanc, that togetherness, so imposing, more radiant to the sun light. The sky, it was of a gloomy azure, from our head it lightened till becoming plain blue over the horizon: but the colours were so fused in to one another...

Leslie Stephen father of Virginia Woolf reached the peak of Mont Blanc in 1873 to admire the sunset, and wrote in his book The playground of Europe : "The snow at our feet was glowing with rich light, and the shadows in our footsteps a vivid green by the contrast. Beneath...