“Livio, what do we do? Do we get up at 5 and do the Fedele on the Pordoi, or do we get up an hour earlier and do the Pichl on the Sassolungo?” Betting everything on the alarm clock turned out to be a bad strategy, as the rest of the story shows! “The Fedele is nice, but I’ve already done it. The early alarm doesn’t scare me, let’s go to the Sassolungo and do that route I’ve wanted to do for a long time.” And so we set off, with an alarm that I hadn’t heard ring in the middle of the night for ages. At the parking lot we see Christoph Heinz’s van… but surely he must have gone to do some extreme route… we’re convinced we’ll be the only ones on the north ridge. The rest of the story proves we were wrong. After contouring the entire wall, below the overhang of Rifugio Comici, we find the start. I look at Livio with a persuasive glance: “Shall we start unroped?” Livio replies with an approving look and heads into the chimney with the rope over his shoulder. And so, from the idea of free-soloing the grade III ramp, we end up overtaking two rope teams, one of them led by none other than the aforementioned Christoph Heinz! We pass sections of grade IV, climb past the Pichl ledge, and after a IV pitch with an extremely exposed traverse, still not convinced by the ease of the “hidden chimney,” we decide to rope up. Five pitches and the route is over… from the topo it seemed longer! A bit of easy terrain, ridges, a rappel, and then off to the summit on rock so abrasive you rarely find anything like it! Five hours from the start to the summit! Livio the free climber confides that he really enjoyed the experience of climbing without a rope! A sandwich, a couple of chats, the usual photos, and we head back down. Livio, with his mind clouded by digestion, starts to slow down, but soon regains his usual energy and starts running again! I follow at full speed so as not to lose him. We casually stop to greet Christoph at the hut, and then hop on the cable car. At which point Livio asks: “Did you bring the bivouac gear that Thomas suggested?” “No, I’m injured and the bivy gear is heavy.” “Then let’s bivouac at Passo Sella hut—I’m starving!”