Route finding a must

Waking up with out the sound of rain on the tent gives us hope, and when we stick our heads out for a peak and see blue sky we look to each other and say "we're clear for our summit bid". We kick it into high gear to leave camp as quickly as possible, our goal for the day is another alpine variant over the top of the South's highest peak, Monte Renoso.

As we walk out of camp Mareike mentions a trail that will save us an hour getting to our approach. We quickly agree this is the best option and vear from the GR20, climbing the forested hills from rock cairn to rock cairn in route to the i'Pozzi bivouac.

From the base of the approach we keep a close eye on the skies around us, we both know that thunderstorms end our journey to the top. We use our ice axes and crampons to reach the first saddle and pull out the map and GPS to confirm and discuss our route. From here we find the trail to not be much more difficult than other parts of our journey. We are able to reach the summit with only a couple short climbing sections and celebrate the top of Monte Renoso with sugary dragon tongue candy.

Mareike brings up another variation to our trail down that would save us a day on the trail and keep us out of the valley. It's a ridge trail that connects into another trail that is supposed to be fun for kids, in the end we both highly doubted people take their kids here.

There's not enough space to tell the story of the next 6 hours of our journey. It's a story to share over a hot meal or a cold beer with friends and family. We became stronger yet as a team as we negotiated thick fog, trails that seemed to end in cliffs, trails that were nonexistent, looming rock towers and snowfields that would play hide and seek and numerous up and down climbs through the granite. In the end we felt like we had the best adventure yet and truly used all of our mountain knowledge along the way. We also couldn't have been happier to get off our feet and lie down after a 12 hour day.Read more