Max Leonard treks back in time along the mountainous Italian-Austrian border

This article was created by National Geographic Traveler (UK).

“Alpine start” is a great thing. The alarm went off when my companion and I got out of our hotel beds at 2:30 a.m., packed our bags and headed out onto a quiet street in Santa Caterina di Valfurva, a village in northern Italy’s Ortler Alps. , I didn’t feel that way. After trudging up a long climb behind a guide in a ramshackle 4WD, the moonlit snow glistening underfoot, and just a few hours later, the mountain sunrise is so spectacular that it’s all you need. We are welcomed as worthy.

Just over 100 years ago, during World War I, these now-quiet mountains formed the border between Italy and Austria, echoing the sounds of artillery fire that became known as the Guerra Bianca. The White War, fought between 1915 and 1918, pitted Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies against each other at an altitude of approximately 3,700 meters.

Living in precarious wooden huts perched on a jagged ridge, the soldiers were also at war with a third enemy: nature itself. It is believed that more people die from cold and malnutrition than at the hands of human enemies in storms, avalanches and rockfalls. I have long been fascinated by the Alps, and as I researched the book, I became fascinated by this story of desperate and extreme conflict. Curse of the Cold: History of Humanity in Ice – Explore how ice has fascinated and fascinated us, and how it has helped shape our societies in the temperate world. I knew I had to visit.

Now we followed in the footsteps of the soldiers along the railroad tracks that were an important supply route for the Italian army above. Every gun, every shell, every plank to assemble, every log to burn, whether on foot, by mule, or by cableway (the predecessor to the chairlifts and cable cars that now dominate the tourism industry in the Alps). And all the canned food. And the bottle of schnapps had to be transported there somehow. These trails are now hiking trails enjoyed by walkers like us.

Passing a small stone hut perched on a rocky island in a sea of ​​snow (once an officer’s headquarters, now a refuge for climbers), we watched as Zebru Glacier descended into a sharp rocky valley. I see it rolling down. Sitting on a ridge overlooking deep white snow, dirty rocks, and a lake of piercing blue meltwater, we strapped on crampons, tightened our ropes, and said goodbye to the ghosts of those soldiers. We head to the pass over the same glacier that the Italians dug a century ago to protect supply lines from enemy fire. “The ice galleries all formed part of a fairy fortress, an ice palace, and were beautiful beyond human imagination,” wrote one modern man who observed the 600-meter-long tunnel.

In fact, this technology was developed by Austrians.

Although an insane situation, these close juxtapositions of beauty, inhumanity, and absurdity are fundamental to my relationship with ice and the various aspects of this contradictory, almost magical substance. It seems to me that it captures something.

Ortler Pass, at 3,353 meters above sea level overlooking the Zebru Glacier, was the literal high point of our trip. There, in the cold wind, we huddled on a thin ledge and peered across the abyss into what was once another country. It was like looking at history itself. However, the figurative high point was Eiskofer (‘Ice Peak’), where three cannons weighing six tons each were simply abandoned by the Austrians as they retreated. . On our way to them, we climbed over the barbed wire of the mountain pass, found tin cans on the muddy slopes, and picked up iron hinges, wires, and boards that had also been left behind. As Alpine glaciers retreat faster than ever, many of these ruins are melting to see the light of day.

These beautiful landscapes are now contained within the Stelvio National Park and are home to skiers, hikers, ibex and vultures. But the past is never far away. For me, on the wide, steep expanse of the Zebru Glacier at 3,000 meters above sea level, gasping for air and fearing the crevasses, thinking of those who lived and died above, and even more horrifyingly, this… There was no place where I felt this. We were literally walking on ice beneath our feet.

Curse of the Cold: History of Humanity in IceWritten by Max Leonard, published by Bloomsbury, £20.