Brezno pod Velbom icefall repeated inside Monte Canin by Nicola Bertoldo, Diego Dellai, Marco Toldo

I woke up late this morning, I'm really lazy in spring! Sitting in the kitchen I think back to all the times I set off from home, more motivated than ever to spend a couple of days in the mountains, either on foot or on skis, more often than not to climb rock or ice.

So what motivates us to drive for hours on end, and invest so much physical and mental energy? Sometimes, I'm sure, it's because we know the result will be unique and beautiful, and will prove immensely satisfying. Usually the day afterwards, while receiving from the climb, we feel more satisfied more than ever. But that's not always the case. Thinking back to the “summits" I've reached, I often remember a sort of “mute” satisfaction; a sense of emptiness, everything ended up there, leaving behind a beautiful adventure that had been thought of days or months earlier.

I’ve come to understand that the beauty of every adventure starts with that little, perhaps even crazy idea, that slowly grows and becomes enriched with details. Maybe at first it's only within us, but then if shared with friends it gains strength and transforms into the group’s main goal.

I’ve got plenty of ideas but each one needs to wait for the right moment in order to develop into its very best… And this most recent idea came about in the blink of an eye; I knew it was there somewhere, although it never really had time to mature! For months Marco Toldo, Nicola Bertoldo and I had planned to do something together for a few days, doing something similar to last year, when we’d spent 3 days on Civetta in the Dolomites climbing the Solleder-Lettenbauer route.

This year we had enough ideas but the weather in early March wasn't the best and so we went from discussing plan A to plan B... C, D and on down the list! What can you do if it's snowing and windy outside? Just go indoors and you're happy! Brilliant! So the idea was to climb Brezno pod Velbom, one of the deepest karst caves in the world, and its icefall. We imagined a unique adventure, abseiling into the darkness, finding ice, abandoning the certitude of a fixed rope to continue abseiling into the void, aware that climbing the ice would be beautiful but above all obligatory in order to return to the light of day and fresh air! This was “program", but we all know that adventure is synonymous with unexpected twists and turns...

Although we'd never done a similar abseil before, we nevertheless all kept our innermost fears to ourselves, and were encouraged to see the others calm and collected. We buried the big haulbag to which we’d anchored our rope, which enabled us to rappel the first 100 metres. The entrance was wide initially wide, but this soon narrowed down and became claustrophobic at -30m, where the ice and pressed snow drip began to appear in the shaft, occupying almost the entire space.

Further down the diameter of the shaft increased, we were were now left with only two 60m half ropes. Marco abseiled, rigged a belay with screws and we followed, observing the ice under our feet, trying to imagine the best line of ascent as we cleaned off some of the surface ice.

Once at the belay we exchanged a few words and, in mutual agreement, pulled the ropes in order to do the next abseil. Four abseils took us down to about -300m, our head torches illuminated incredible rock and ice flows above us, suspended in absolute darkness. The shaft continued to plummet downwards but we stopped here, the ice below seemed less thick and 300 meters above our heads were more than enough!

It's a silent world down there, you feel like talking quietly and paying extreme attention to where you place your feet, but then when Nicola's ice axes and crampons begin to crack the ice, everything returns to normal, or almost so. The head torch starts to climb ascend and becomes smaller and smaller as it edges off into the darkness. Those who climb focus on nothing but those few surrounding square meters, the ambient is intimate and the noises muffled, if it weren't for the crashes that come when the falling ice finally smashes something deep below.

The situation we’re in is completely new to us; three friends, a sleeping bag and a stove, climbing up an underground icefall, in an absolutely fantastic world where it even starts to snow!

by Diego Dellai
Dellai thanks Valli Sport.

Notes: the first ascent of this crazy idea by Alberto Dal Maso dates back to 24/4/2016 and was carried out by Matteo Rivadossi, Andrea Tocchini and Luca Vallata, supported by Sara Segantin and Leonardo Comelli. Due to the conditions, once we reached the fixed ropes, we jumared up the last 100 meters.