The need to hammer in some pegs, to get lost in order to find yourself. By Giovanni Zaccaria

"Giuseppe Suppiej, Venetian lawyer, died a few days ago aged 87. He was one of the most distinguished scholars and professors of labor law. He taught in universities across Europe and, at the end of his career, in Padua. An illustrious and famous Venetian, he loved his city dearly. " I called Giuseppe Suppiej mainly "Nonno", Grandpa, or at most "Nonno Beppi”, Grandpa Beppi. And reading the blurb in the newspapers I fell as if something is missing, from this grandfather figure who was no longer with us. In fact, as well as being a lawyer, professor, father and grandfather, he was also a mountaineer, both in the mountains and in life. He often repeated "Per aspera ad astra", quoting the Latin phrase meaning "through hardships to the stars". It was he who had taught me how to walk up mountain paths and scramble across rocks, to appreciate putting in the effort, to enjoy a summit and love the mountains. This he taught me, and also to his 16 other grandchildren, perhaps indirectly to some of the smallest.

While lawyers and journalists prepare funeral speeches, and the family gathers in Venice to arrange the ceremony, I also feel the need to do something while thinking about Grandpa. Simply don’t think about him, that’s it: I want to take his thoughts up into the mountains. I don’t know where to go, I don’t want to go somewhere well-known, so I consider the Marmarole group, a mountain range I know little about, apart from names I’d read about on some maps. When you don’t know where to go, chance often lends a helping hand, in the form of some useless yet at times much appreciated coincidences. As it happens, I become intrigued by the ink that stats "Campanile St. Marco" on a mountain map, so I find out more about the bivouac at the base of the peak. This is named after Musatti, a distinguished jurist and excellent Venetian alpinist: all doubts are washed aside, it’s there I need to go.

I’m not really sure what I’m going there for, but since it’s winter and there’s no snow, perhaps ice axes and winter mountaineering equipment are the gear that could hypothetically be of use. Above all, I take a rack of my Grandpa’s pegs: I’d inherited them, hammered them in and pulled them out countless times: they bear the signs and the blood of many years in the mountains. Now though I feel they no longer belong to me, I have to hammer them in and leave them behind, this time forever, for the mountain. Luckily Alice, as always, listens, follows and accompanies my raving thoughts, in order to help me realise my idea: maybe she thinks I'll feel slightly better afterwards.

The result is Per aspera ad astra (70° M5/IV 550mt), an adventure (not necessarily a new route) in memory of Giuseppe Suppiej. We climbed without a topo along the large ramp in the middle of the north face of Campanile S. Marco, until we reached the notch on the summit ridge. We did this across thirteen pitches of snow, rock, and a little bit of ice, climbed through the eyes of those who wished to explore a little-known area, without any information whatsoever, and with hands and heart which, together, hammered in my grandpa’s pegs. Nine were left insitu at the belays on Campanile San Marco that then enabled us to abseil in the dark back down the route. The crux of our climb was breaching the first short slabby wall (M5), which provided access to the ramp. We stumbled across three belays on the lower part of the face, discovering only afterwards that the line we had imagined - a logical winter climb - crosses the summer climb Casara-Cavallini at its start. This then bears left towards the summit but we, on that day, had no summit to reach.

The next morning, in the church of S. Canciano, not only our eyes, but also our hands were a bit swollen.

by Giovanni Zaccaria