Impressive impressions: Patrick Berhault and Mt. Monviso

Years go by and new "journeys" are carried out, new "enchainments", new "traverses", gear becomes lighter and lighter and climbs become quicker and quicker, so much so that they escape rules becoming - almost - incomprehensible. Years go by and my astonishment fades, this emotion becomes the norm and mountaineering mutates into "simplicity". But that evening he became one of us, and our eyes, my eyes, had remembered that long ridge, that never-ending series of frozen, inhospitable cornices that had truly struck me; that ascent seemed so ‘out of place’ and unknown that it captured our undivided interest. It had never been done before, we’d never seen anything like it… Mount Monviso always stops me in my tracks, on clear days, as I ascend up to Grignetta: I can see it there, in the distance, clear-cut, so perfect that even a child can draw it, a triangle pointing up into the clear-blue sky... and that ridge?

I asked Fulvio Scotto to tell me more and, one day when we reached the top of the mountain, to show me the long ridge: the gaze travelled far, far into the distance.

The first ascentionists, Livio Patrile and Hervè Tranchero in the year I was born, way back in 1968, the young solo climber Riki Maero, strong and determined in August 1990 in just eight hours, and then He the Great, the humble one, the inventor, the genius... And now, in an era when everything happens at breakneck speed, someone has written with the ignorance of those who do not know, that everything has already been done, that after the wonderful six North Faces enchained in a single winter, little is left to do by mixing names and ascents from different eras. I think that ridge, about what it means, about its history. And I remember that night, clear and different, and its great protagonist Patrick Berhault. And Re Pietra, the Stone King, a wonderful way to call huge Mt. Monviso, at whose feet the most beautiful river springs to life.

This is what is written in the Rifugio Giacoletti website:
The ridge that runs from Colle Traversette to MonViso represents an important chapter of the exceptional Traverse of the Alps carried out by Patrick Berhault who, in 167 days, enchained the most beautiful alpine faces all the way from Slovenia to the Maritime Alps with twenty-two great "historical" ascents. This ambitious crest had long fueled the dreams of mountaineers. From 27 June to 1 July 1968 Livio Patrile and Hervè Tranchero, the strongest climbers at the time, carried out the first traverse in five days, bivying four times along the way, and this was a landmark achievement. They did so by climbing the long NNW Ridfe of MonViso, from its summit they reached Dado di Vallanta and then they completed the traverse by descending the Dado West Ridge. The long report of this traverse is described in detail in the book "MONVISO King of Stone" by Ezio Nicoli that ends with these words: "They climbed Gagliardone to say they’d done it, stolen someone else’s dream. Without malice." Thirty years later, Patrick Berhault’s achievement pulverizes another dream. On the 8th and 9th of January 2001, in just two days, he accomplished his amazing feat: alone and in winter he traversed the entire ridge from Colle delle Traversette to the summit of Viso and, in doing so, he carried out the first solo winter ascent. On 16 August 1990 Riki Maero, a young mountaineer from Piasco, carried out another beautiful ascent: the first solo ascent of the long ridge in just 8 hours from Colle delle Traversette to the summit of Viso. As Nietzsche says, "Man is happy not when it is satiated, but when he is capable of winning."

The game continues ... for those who know how to play!

by Ivo Ferrari 

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Info: www.giacoletti.it/cresta-berhault