Goulotte Toxic Mushroom added to Mont Noir de Peutérey by Niccolò Bruni, Giovanni Ravizza, Michele Tixi

Finally a little dream of mine has come true. Ever since I was a child, while going up to the La Grolla restaurant, I must have looked at that enormous shield of rock at the foot of Aiguille Noire de Peuterey thousands of times. In truth the original plan idea was to climb a different gully, which unfortunately had already been climbed but we didn't know it, so we opted for our plan B.

While taking the Skyway Monte Bianco cable car to Punta Helbronner I started to carefully observe the wall in search of something else, and suddenly the moment was right to try a line up the central section of the Scudo Est... a straight, logical line with quite a bit of ice rose almost to the top of the wall.

I immediately wrote to my friend Giovanni Ravizza, who replied "Yes, let's give this beast a go." ;-)

This is how Toxic Mushroom came to life, a magnificent line with superb quality rock. Every pitch is worth climbing and highly satisfying. Two busy days until late in the evening, some nice falls, hours spent shoveling snow mushrooms and much more tested us both physically and psychologically, but it was truly worth it.

A huge thanks to Michele Tixi who helped us finish the outing.

by Niccolò Bruni