UKC

Hello - my partner and I just made a (near?) winter ascent of the north ridge of Piz Badile. We climbed for 18 hrs and made a bivouac within one rope's length from the summit and then summited early next morning. It was our first time on this mountain and my first time to Bregaglia. We tried to find some information online prior to our attempt (history and topo info) but we didn't find much on winter ascents of the north ridge - only according to SummitPost that the first winter ascent was in "1964 by Aldo Anghileri, Casimiro Ferrari, and Giuseppe Negri." Does anyone know some history about climbing this classic route in the winter? We would be very curious to read others' trip reports about difficulty, condition etc. We had mostly loose and thin layer of snow plastered on slabs, which made some sections quite spicy and interesting, especially in the dark. Our planned descent was rappelling via the same route, but we could not find many of the anchors on the ascent, so we decided to make the long way down the south side to Val di Mello and hitchhiked back to our car in Bondo. Altogether we had 2 very long days...! We will write up a trip report soon and share some photos. Greetings!

A few photos here: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPKB2vheyUvmhgCbl184x7f0yMBpHbzm8FWiks...

In reply to climbnplay:

Bloody hell I bet that was cold. Were the big ring anchors covered in snow or something? Sounds like a big day.

In reply to Wood for Trees:

the climbing was not so cold, but the open bivouac semi-tucked away behind a boulder was! It was a windy and shivery night! (We brought one sleeping bag, one mat and one bivy bag between the 2 of us as an emergency measure.) We found some nice anchors but an inconvenient number of them were buried in snow (and we also didn't follow the exact line of the summer classic route) for us to doubt the abseil descent down the same route.

In reply to climbnplay:

Spotting the rings isn't always easy in the summer let alone when they're covered in snow! Looks like a proper adventure!

In reply to climbnplay:

yep sounds like it would have been a big adventure abbing back down, hassle enough in summer.