The first ski mountaineering trip of the season

The first trip this season begins on Thursday, you start to scanning the reports on Gulliver and simply can't wait for Saturday. You try, but it's tough.

You exit the motorway and drive across the plain, not a trace of snow in sight. Those waiting for the school bus wear hoodies, others just a T-shirt. As you cross the plain you begin to worry about having forgotten something, certain automatic reflexes need a little dusting: I've forgotten my glasses! Ah, no, I've got them after all. What about my gloves? And ski sticks?

Before the first trip this season, as you drive up through the valley you hope the snow begins where you'd planned on leaving the car. The larch trees are still orange, revealing how they managed to infiltrate into the forest of fir trees, their needles scattered across the snow, dirtying the climbing skins.

During the first trip the snow low down is heavy and wet, sticks to the bindings as you ascend, the first trip caught you off guard, you didn't wax your skis and the snow remains stuck even during the descent. And on the summit, on that first trip, when you fasten your bindings, you feel a bit clumsy.

Were this a mid-season trip, then it would be nothing special, with it's crusty snow up high, slush down below and gentle skiing across hillocks. But after four months of abstinence, four months without skinning up and skiing down, this is the best transformation the snow can undergo, who cares about firn, powder snow or champagne powder...

After the first trip of the season you boast to your friend that you got there before him, while he replies that, with that snow, he opted to go to Ikea. You don't believe him, knowing full well that you'd have said exactly the same. You smile and move on.

On the first trip you reach the summit and point towards hundreds of peaks you want to climb this season, while your partner points to a thousand he climbed last year.

The first trip is in the bag, it's now time to do another.

by Mattia Salvi