And how could anyone ever contradict those who say this is a cold place? We get up early as well, having breakfast at 5 a.m. like the French, hoping not to end up behind them. But the French are fast—I run too, but Mirela a bit less—so I slow down, and at the start we find four teams ahead of us. Very slow. The cold is really intense. At the first belay I feel like a piece of wood, but we keep going anyway… a bit of movement should warm us up… wrong! First of all, we wait more than an hour at the belay, and then, without thinking twice, I follow a French climber onto the second pitch of Agrippine, which I climb almost entirely by sight, since my hands and feet are completely frozen. From there things improve a bit, but the fact remains that the climb stays in the shade the whole time. We reach the top exhausted and abandon the plan of climbing Conto fino a zero on the Becco Meridionale della Tribolazione on Monday. Just to be safe, we stay at the hut anyway, where an excellent paella is waiting for us! My regards and best wishes for a speedy recovery to Mirela, who unfortunately fell and was seriously injured on the summit of the Madonna a few days later while we were climbing the second pitch of the Messner route.