There are moments, in everybody's life, that seem endless. Minutes appear like hours and the world seems to move in slow motion. No sounds or external voices but only the whispering of a rough air through the nostrils. Temples and chest are throbbing. A sensation of heat in the hands and in the legs. That's like I feel every time I'm looking for a downhill path from the peak: I can see my impending snowboard tip sticks out of a virgin mountainside. And this it's like I felt descending the North path of Pik Lenin.

Pik Lenin - Sunset (Photo Luca dalla Palma)

I have been going to the mountains for ages. I like climbing, skiing, running, cycling, flying, in every possible way. I enjoy the silence and the cool morning air. I like to touch rocks and find out the shape of the handholds. I like to straddle mountain peaks, running as long as I can and find out how long I can go on before dropping exhausted. I like to fly over the mountains and recognize paths and fields that I know. I like mountains in winter, I like the snow. I like to slide down faces of the mountain, always more steep and difficult. In winter I like to wake up very early in the morning to be able to be the first one to arrive at the skiing school. After the skiing school and before going home, I like to do some off-piste skiing and flatter myself on having time to attend a Guide's course. I like the smell of my mountains clothes pressed in the haversack. I like to have a snack in the wood with my children. My father passed on to me this "sickness", he infected me as well.

Walking towards the north face	Base camp	Earning their turns!!

In the past years, I have pursued my dream to be concretely a "mountain man", in the noblest sense of the word. I consider myself so lucky to have been able to do so, even though somebody keeps on calling me a "snowboarder", in a derogatory way.

Climbing up (Photo Luca dalla Palma)

Among the several possibilities that mountains can offer in wintertime, my favourite is definitely snowboarding. Basically it combines the pure pleasure of a sports gesture in freshly fallen snow with a full alpine effort that aims to perfection and difficulty over majestic mountains faces. In brief, this is my common sense of snowboarding, the "engine" behind my motivation. All my journeys and adventures originate from this attitude. I'm lucky; I have travelled around the five continents and shared my tent with people with my same passion from all over the world. The last expedition at Pik Lenin started with the same spirit. We departed in three of us towards Palmir. Besides me, there were Luca Dalla Palma from Bassano and Elena Spalenza from Brescia. Luca is a telemark living legend, a great photographer and a person with whom I share the same passion and the same point of view about the fact that mountains are extremely varied.

We departed Italy on July 17th. We planned our journey in twenty days without stressing each other too much about the arrangements and making no pretence to organize a real expedition. We were simply three friends looking for altitude, freshly fallen snow and a huge mountain face to descend from.
Once arrived at the Pik Lenin base camp, the overview of the mountain face was breathtaking. The reality greatly exceeded our expectations. Counting from the summit at 7.134 m., the height of this mountain face is approximately 3000 m. and it a single slope with few crevices and drops.

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