Anna Torretta and Ama Dablam. The female side of the mountain

On the 23rd October 2006, Anna Torretta reached the summit of Ama Dablam (Khumbu, Nepal, Himalaya) following the classical route along the South-West ridge. The ascent had been planned together with Cogne’s Viviana Savin, and is part of the project "The female side of the mountain", sponsored by Grivel, the Vallee d’Aoste region and supported by Courmayeur’s Mountain Guide Society.  The programme plans ascents amongst women on the "female" mountains of this planet. Anna is obviously the inspiration of this original idea. Ama Dablam means “Mother with necklace”, a female mountain. An elegant summit which foresees a route along the ridge to reach the summit… Unfortunately Viviana Savin had health problems even before the ascent, at Loubuce,  6.100m, so she did not feel up to undertaking the ascent. For Anna Torretta this ascent was an exploration, a first approach to high altitude and to the Himalayas on a beautiful and frequented mountain. This is how Anna lived her first experience and the unknown factor of how her body would have reacted at altitude combined with the curiosity of discovering a world which she had only heard of.

Ama Dablam, south-west ridge
There are many Italians at Ama Dablam’s base camp, there are many expeditions which are waiting to climb the Himalayan Matterhorn this October. There is a lot of snow, soft and powdery, impalpable on the south-west ridge; rumour has it that the sherpas are making anchors by pouring water on the snow, to create cohesion…
I came to Nepal to see a country which I did not know and to put my hands on the Himalayan mountains, to understand what it means to climb 6-7 thousand metres, to ask my body for an answer.
I spend the night at Camp 1 with Luca Argentero, architect and mountain guide at Courmayeur, in the morning I feel slightly nauseous, Luca descends to reach his partners at Base Camp, I prepare my things and I force myself to set off with my leash attached to the fixed ropes.
Ama Dablam is a mountain which is harnessed by thousands of metres of static ropes, to allow commercial expeditions to carry their clients to the summit, the south-west ridge is anything but trivial, but the fixed ropes help deal with the its difficulties.
My back pack suffocates me while I climb up to camp 2, I feel all the weight of my lungs, I am too slow. I wait for an hour and a half at the “yellow tower”, I am almost happy, I rest: I look at ridiculous scenes of people in front of me who are trying to gain the few metres of vertical rock by using a jumar. I feel as if I am on the Cosmiques ridge with my clients, at the crux, but here I cannot go round all these people, I have to wait in line! I have lost precious time, I can no longer climb up to camp 3, it is almost dark and I have to stop.
Camp 2 is in an amazing position, on the edge of the ridge, over the precipice, with very few and uncomfortable platforms: I find a free tent, this is where I will spend the night. Sergey, an enormous Ukrainian who looks like Father Christmas, is in my same situation, but he cannot find anywhere to sleep, therefore asks me for hospitality for the night.
I wake up early in the morning and at 7 am I am ready to “attack” the vertical fixed ropes over the camp. I have taken a decision: I will leave all of my bivouac equipment at the camp and I will climb up with only my duvet, first aid and hot tea. Yesterday the back pack tired me out, it took the fun out of things, today I want to climb up quickly, reach the summit as quickly as possible, I am sure I will make it within the day.
I pass through camp 3, I find the tent where I should have slept, I hide the back pack inside and climb up without it. I do not take with me either water or snacks, the summit is not far and above all it is too cold for anything. I climb up below the serac, I cross the Frenchmen who are descending, Pierre Blanc, a mountain guide from Courchevel looks at me with a worried look and offers me some water. I drink it greedily, Pierre will tell me later that he saw my lips as being totally white.
The fixed rope guided me through the fog up to the summit, where I took ten drunken steps, free from ropes, towards the flags that came out of the snow. Sergey, waited for me on the summit for almost half an hour, he shakes my hand and I hand him over my video camera. I thank him whole-heartedly, it is cold, he descends before me along the “life-line” through the fog. I am alone on the summit of Ama Dablam, I look towards Everest and I also move towards the ropes which disappear into the fog.
I descend quickly, the ropes are fixed far away from each other, the rappel device slides quickly. At camp 3 I recover my back pack from the tent which in the meantime has been taken over by a sherpa and a girl, there is no point in arguing, since I have other problems, 60cm of powder snow have just fallen, day light is fading I have to reach camp 2.
Fortunately the Ukranians are slow in their descent, I catch up and join them, I am in no hurry, that way I will have company. I reached camp 2 at 7.30 pm, after more than twelve hours non-stop. It is dark, I am happy, I look for a free tent to spend the night. Someone has set up a new tent today. Making dinner does not come easy, the powder snow which has come down today is voluminous, I need 2 litres just to make two inches of water! A broth will have to be enough to fill me up, but I am greedy and cannot resist making a chocolate mousse.
On Ama Dablam I used the style which I would have used for an ascent at home but I used fixed ropes, I used tents which had already been set up, it disappoints me even just talking about it, I would have never thought of climbing a mountain this way. Do not write that I climbed solo, this is an abuse of terminology, I climbed autonomously, but solo is something completely different! I followed an umbilical cord which led me through the fog to the summit of my first Himalayan mountain.
Anna Torretta

The stages of the ascent
20/10/06 Departure from Base Camp, 4.800m
21/10/06 Camp 1, 5.700m
22/10/06 Camp 2, 5.960m
23/10/06 Camp 2 - Summit 6.852m- Camp 2
24/10/06 Return to Base Camp