IT’S THE SOUND of falling rocks that we notice first. Somewhere in the vast glacial bowl where we’re walking, there’s a sudden knock and a clatter. We stop and look around, across the scree and rubble, scanning for the source of the echo. Of course, we can’t pick it out until it moves once more: the confident, patient form of a camoscio.
Once it notices us, the camoscio – better known as a chamois – shrieks. It’s a strained, high-pitched bark, a sound at odds with the animal’s soft, unostentatious form. It skips lightly down static streams of broken rock, before turning to watch us move far less certainly through the clutter at our feet. It shrieks once more, as if to mock our unsteadiness, then picks its easy route and skips out of sight amongst the shards of the mountain.
THE HARDEST OF MOUNTAINS?
We set off into the Marmarole beneath an unfamiliar blue sky. My girlfriend Giulia and I have already spent a week in the Italian Dolomites in sight of these mountains, whose summits have been draped in swirling cloud. Today, however, the sky is clear and the air cool, and their rough, crumbling peaks stand in the sun, magnificent and daunting.
“The hardest of mountains, without
