Marco and I decide to give this route a try. Marco is convinced it won’t take us long to complete it, but everyone I know who’s climbed it has had to bivouac or came very close to doing so. We set off a bit late to avoid the icy rock, pass a Spanish rope team who ask if we want to go ahead of them (unbelievable!!!), and start climbing pitch after pitch. There’s no shortage of spots where you can make a mistake, but luckily, sometimes after long deliberations, we manage to find the right route. Since we started late, we also reach the summit late, a few minutes before 9 p.m., amidst a breathtaking spectacle. What a route! Beautiful and endless! You reach the end of the rock section and think you’re close to the summit, but you’re not… That moment marks exactly the halfway point of the ascent. To climb the Gervasutti Pillar, you have to reach the top. Rappelling down isn’t an option. Although I usually write a detailed pitch-by-pitch report for predominantly rock routes, I won’t be doing so this time. Here’s why: there are plenty of reports out there, quite different from one another and a bit imprecise but generally reliable, and besides, it’s nice to be on terrain where intuition about the route matters more than the report. Last but not least, there are so many pitches that I’d probably forget some of them, since I didn’t take any notes! For anyone wishing to climb the route in the coming days, conditions are excellent: snow only on the north-facing pitches, with mixed terrain and excellent snow of a very pleasant consistency.