Tonight it should have been my first night in Cogne, Val d'Aosta, a pretty small town in the Gran Paradiso national park. But unfortunately I’m still at home, in Milano.

What is the reason?

No, it’s not because of some last minute deadline at work, but because most of the valleys in that part of the Alps are isolated: more than 3 meter of snow accumulated over the last week, and now that the sun is shining and the temperature is raising, spontaneous avalanches are starting to fall down, also one the road that connects the main valley to the villages. So the road are closed, and Cogne, together with many other ski-areas like Gressoney, are unreachable.

Hopefully tomorrow the weather is expected to be colder, and going on the road is less risky: but even if I get to Cogne, I think doing ice climbing in these conditions will be too dangerous (usually ice falls are where avalanches come down). So probably my week of vacation will only be cross-country skiing.