Off-piste on Monte Quarnan with our four-footed friends

It has snowed at low altitude. I look at the Faeit from home, and seen that it is covered with snow up to the old village of Cragnolin; behind, the Quarnan is invisible. It’s seven thirty. I’ve already prepared the equipment. Dogs jump into the boot. Only from Artegna can I see part of Monte Quarnan lost in the clouds and snow. The smell of excited dogs fills the car and when I open the window to take a picture, the fresh and pungent air caresses my face.

At Montenars I come across the first snow. I leave the car above the cemetery. The dogs roam the old village while I get ready. I forgot to load the hiking sticks. I shrugged my shoulders and mutter to myself that “I will do without” and set off up the first slope with Thoer and Wolf.

The path immediately enters the forest. The dogs precede me in the not very high fresh snow. I walk slowly amid trees broken by the August storm last summer and those knocked over by the heavy freeze two winters ago. The woods are silent. The snow muffles all sounds. It is snowing gently, between the branches that retain a good part of the snow, while the damp and unfrozen soil is rather slippery.

“Sot de ploe fam sot de nef pan”

(a Friulian proverb: “Beneath the snow, bread, beneath the rain, hunger”, referring to the conservation of corn), I repeat to myself, remembering the sayings of my uncle.

Sometimes the snowboard that I put in the backpack get stuck in the low branches and forces me into to strange contortions to proceed. The snow increases and falls more firmly but not enough to allow me to ski down through the woods on snow. Many stones and branches emerge on the path. I hope there is more snow at the top. I arrive at the Zuc de Cros and look over the plain that still seems sleepy in this morning soaked in snowy air. Here there are about 10 centimetres of snow. Still too little to ski down, but in anticipation of the climb to the top and not having the right boots, I put only the snowshoes that at least have steel spikes to grip on rocks, snow and ice.

The lack of sticks is immediately felt. But the dogs cheerfully open the road in the snow. The low branches force me to bow before them and my knees are grumbling as a result. I finally climb past the line of shrubs. I’m at an altitude of over a thousand metres. I follow the path hidden by the snow, storing the stones that stick out in my memory. I have known this mountain, my mountain, the first that rises above the Friulian plain, giving glimpses of Friuli as precious as pearls, since I was a boy. I have come to find peace up here hundreds of times. And this time I’m sure it will not fail to give me new sensations. Sometimes the dogs in their frenzy do not “sense” the path that lies hidden under the blanket of snow that now exceeds forty centimetres. At these times they stop and turn to look at me, waiting to understand from my expression whether to go right or left. As soon as they sense the track, they start bounding happily through the snow.

Meanwhile, I climb slower and slower. Only a few years ago, at this point the dogs would have positioned themselves behind me, letting me open the path with snowshoes and, with their tongues hanging out, they would have followed me adoringly. Now Wolf is first, with his broad back collecting the falling snow, and on some steep parts of the path, he leans on his front paws and imperiously looks back to see  if we are all there, then, almost haughty in his supremacy he resumes his road-opening. Thor then comes back to me, so close as almost to brush against me, as though to to tell me “Come on! Weren’t you the expedition leader once upon a time?” I pat him, smiling, and he goes forward again trotting to follow his tail, a flag waving in the snow, as though to show the way.

I look forward to seeing the old mountain hut on my right, now restored, where I have spent many nights with the friends of my youth and where I dreamed of flying, running on the roof, then flat, and gliding over the entire plain. Instead, hidden in the falling snow, the sudden refuge appears right in front of me. But I do not stop. The Redeemer calls me. With a strong wind that rises suddenly, from the depths of Sella Foredor. And the higher I get, the more the wind becomes a storm that sweeps the summit. I glimpse the church, shelter in its small porch but the swirling wind fills it with snow. The dogs curl up in a corner while I try to change and prepare the snowboard.

The temperature has suddenly fallen; my hands are frozen, and I cannot even fasten my helmet. The snow is now reduced to sharp needles and penetrates everywhere. The dogs seem scared. I set off again with the snowboard under my arm. I sense that the wind will stop just below the summit. I look at the sculpture of the risen Christ by the father of my friend Nando, old Patat, with his arms that stretched heavenwards. It asks me for a prayer. Then I put the board on and throw myself on the snow. I slip quickly past the hut.

Wolf precedes me on the track, descending precipitously on the track we took coming up. Thor instead follows my board so closely that more than once he makes me tumble into the soft snow and hidden rocks. You just have to know how to fall, I think, let yourself go, and with a somersault, covered with snow, start again. There is not enough snow to snowboard decently but it does not matter. The board also slides on grass, under the snow, gets stuck in the rocks, rushes me down the steep slope. But I always get up, laughing loudly, like a huge child, panting happily and full of snow in all my clothes, while around me the dogs bark or look at me in amazement, there above the silent plain, which does not imagine and does not know.