Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 14, 2025

2912m

Abruzzo Region, Italy

Corno Grande, the high point of Apennine Peninsula boasts significant amount of prominence and isolation but at the same time, the standard route is basically a “walk-up” with less than 800 m elevation gain. This peak has a long and paved road access and car-camping is legal and free in Italy making Corno Grande one of the busiest peaks in the Apennines. Adam proposed multiple times that we should somehow manage to make the 7+ hours drive down to the vicinity of Rome to bag this peak, as it would be the most prominent peak bagged in this entire trip, unless we somehow managed Mont Blanc. My initial thought was to focus more in the Alps but then I never rejected an idea because of the long driving distances. I liked Corno Grande because of the short hiking stats and I thought this would be a great objective to “recover” before Ortles and Matterhorn which would come up very soon.

Earlier in the day we had ascended Cima Valdritta and Cima Prà della Baziva next to Lago di Garda and we did not make the plan to drive down south for Corno Grande until on the summit of Cima Valdritta. This meant we didn’t get an early start for the mission. We actually didn’t start the southwards drive until almost noon. Adding the gas and grocery stops it would be at least 7 pm when we made ourselves down to the trail-head. This would be perfectly fine if the plan was to tag it on the following day, which was the original itinerary until I changed it after seeing the other “Ultra”, namely M. Amaro was nearby. I must get back to the Tyrolean Alps for Ortles by the evening of the following day, but I somehow thought it would be possible to tag both Cordo Grande and Monte Amaro, as well as making the 9+ hours of northwards drive all within the required 24+ hours time frame. This meant we would be doing Corno Grande immediately upon arrival at 7 pm. Adam wasn’t too positive about the idea but reluctantly agreed to give it a try. The weather was also not cooperating with isolated thunderstorms here and there, but currently there wasn’t one on top of Corno Grande. We also made a mistake by skipping a gas station stop, such that by the time we drove back down into the town the gas mileage was down to within 10 km. There was no buffer and no margin for error whatsoever. My initial “plan” of heading down to the Apennines was to get a bit of a “rest break” but this plan wasn’t quite working out. Instead of resting we were now aiming at over 2000 m elevation gain plus 16 hours of driving with hardly any sleep.

The drive to the trail-head itself was an adventure with so much elevation gain and scenery along the way. Too bad we didn’t have time to soak in the views nor to camp up there. I actually made a mistake by not exiting immediately after that long tunnel so wasted at least 10 km of driving, but I was completely rely on Google Map and the GPS signal was lost (or lagging) while in the tunnel. The App wasn’t able to react immediately by telling me to exit. Higher up I was watching the fuel gauge to drop but there wasn’t much we could do. We underestimated the distance of the driving to the upper trail-head so we could only hope that we had enough fuel to get back down into the town.

Eventually we parked the vehicle and started at around 7:30 pm, about an hour before sunset. This wasn’t too bad actually. The hike itself was rather trivial compared to the travel of getting there. We crested the saddle NE of Picco Confalonieri moments before the sunset and got some great views while traversing across the bowl SW of Corno Grande. The weather was mostly overcast so the views could have even been better. There are two route options higher up on the ridge but it was already dark by the time we got to the fork. Instead of taking the more fun and direct 3rd class ridge we opted to stay on the normal route. There was still some scrambling involved near the top but nothing was worth noting. The route was longer than I thought, and there were definitely a few thunder cells around so I was quite nervous and wanted to keep going. The faster we could finish this objective the better. I did make Adam to stop regularly for photos because to take the nighttime pictures I needed my partner to cooperate by not moving for a few seconds.

We snagged a few photos from the summit and then immediately descended. The route-finding was not trivial in the pitch dark but I led us down without much trouble. We got some rain briefly but did not feel the electric charges nor hearing any thunder in the immediate vicinity. The rain stayed as drizzling and actually stopped as we made our way back down into the bowl. The rest of the descent was easy, but we started to observe an extremely intense thunderstorm developing not far from us to the west. I could hear loud thunders every 20 seconds or so, but we never got hit by that storm. Our round trip time was under 3.5 hours and then due to the concern of fuel we drove immediately down to Camarda for gas. It was pouring cats and dogs down there. I then drove us another 1.5 hours southwards along winding roads to near the trail-head for Monte Amaro, and settled for the night at 1:30 am.