My passion for climbing and mountaineering has led me to travel and explore many areas in the Alps, Switzerland, Spain, the Atlas Mountains, and then to climb and open new routes as far as Kyrgyzstan and Chile.
In the last two years I have participated in the CAI Eagle Team project, and I was selected for the final expedition to Patagonia in February 2025: they have been two great years, perhaps the best of my life. I grew so much as a person and as a mountaineer, my dreams started to become projects and I put mountaineering at the centre of my life, so much so that I came to the drastic choice of quitting my job as an engineer (I'm a basic astrophysicist) and giving up everything without having a plan B, with only the certainty of wanting to climb mountains.
Unfortunately, the expedition to Patagonia did not go as planned. On the second day I got stuck with my back, and that's how I stayed for the whole time: with a strong and constant pain day and night, which affected my body and mind and which after two months I discovered was due to a cervical hernia. During those weeks I had a lot of time to think, and to feel homesick for home, my mountains and Val di Mello.
It was my friend Giga who got me involved in the Melloblocco project. I was going through a really difficult time, and he was perhaps the person who managed to stay closest to me from afar. Maybe he knows a lot about back pain, he knows Patagonia, and he is a great expert on Patagonia and back pain: the fact is that with the ‘official’ proposal to join the Melloblocco organisation he managed to give me a strong positive energy.
At the end of March I returned home, with only two thoughts: to get my back right and to work at Melloblocco; and so I started doing physiotherapy and brushing blocks. Among the boulders and the woods I finally began to find harmony with nature, peace in my head and incredible motivation: bouldering is perhaps the discipline I have explored the least in recent years, despite the fact that all my friends in Milan are boulderers. It has always fascinated me and I promised myself that I would dedicate myself to it when I returned from the expedition: this unusual approach is opening up a new world for me.
I like admiring the beauty of lines that have never been climbed or dusted off, seeing the harmony with which my team of route setters and that of ASD Val Masino work, it is only natural for me to put as much effort as possible into cleaning every square centimetre of rock from moss and into fixing every base and path so that these beautiful passages can be climbed. I have an irrepressible urge to climb as well, of course, but over the past few months I have learned to slow down the pace and listen to my body more, and I know that it will take time to recover 100%. But these boulders will remain here, along with many others yet to be discovered, and all in all for now just taking care of them fulfils me and gives me comfort.
I hope in the coming years to be able to take part in the organisation of the event from the beginning, and to continue to make my contribution to the enhancement of our beloved valley.
Thank you to all the workers, artists and brush-makers with whom I am spending wonderful days, and thanks in particular to Giga for all that she has more or less unknowingly done for me.