Italians establish Less is More on Shawa Kangri in India's Rangtik Valley

If I stop to think about how this year began, I would never have imagined I'd find myself here, living an experience like this. For me, 2025 started with an ice climbing accident, where I fractured two vertebrae in my cervical spine. Doctors and orthopedists were by no means optimistic about a quick recovery.

My expectations for this year were therefore very low, just like my morale at the time. I just hoped this nightmare would end as soon as possible, even though I knew I had to rest to recover fully from this accident. Deep down, however, I dreamed of getting back in shape as soon as possible to return to my beloved mountains and do what I love most.

Finally, after four months of "prison" spent in a brace and neck collar, the situation seemed to improve: during a routine check-up, I was told the vertebrae were healing and that I could start recovery with physiotherapy and slowly return to normal.

With the first climbs, my mood finally began to improve; I had no projects for the summer, I was simply chasing the dream of climbing like I did before. Then the turning point came when Matteo De Zaiacomo and Chiara Gusmeroli invited me to join them on an expedition to India. It didn't think twice, and the next day I quit my job and bought the plane ticket.

For me, it was an incredible opportunity. I've spent years dreaming of taking part in an expedition like this one, and finally I had the chance to realise this dream and test myself on these peaks on the other side of the world with two great friends.

Our expedition started in the best way possible. We set off in mid-August, and all three of us were wildly excited, ready to explore this paradise valley tucked away in the Zanskar region.

We arrived right during a good weather window, and even though we weren't very acclimatised, we decided to try to climb. On 21 August, Chiara and I managed to repeat Rolling Stones on Shawa Kangri, and morale kept rising: just six days earlier we were leaving Italy and now we were at 5,728 meters on a summit in India!

We returned to this mountain with Matteo two days later to open a route on the unclimbed northwest face. It was an exciting challenge. We climbed following a logical route up the face, climbing only with traditional protection, all free, without forcing the line; the result was a beautiful 500m climb with difficulties up to VIII grade on excellent rock, following a series of flakes, corners, and some slab sections on "interesting" pro. At this point, morale was sky-high, and the team was functioned well and in sync for the upcoming outings.

Back at base camp, however, it started to snow, and this bad weather continued for the next ten days, snowing non-stop and creating a vertiable Christmassy atmosphere. During this enforced rest period, we had time to decorate the camp with a snowman, have various snowball fights, play cards, and think about the name of our new route.

It was while playing cards, listening to "Society" by Eddie Vedder, that a line struck us and stuck in our heads like a mantra: Less is More. Nothing could be more fitting as a name for the new line. It really takes very little to have beautiful adventures: friends, a few cams and nuts, and a good eye to follow the lines the rock offers, without forcing things and without leaving traces of our passage, thus preserving the spirit of adventure for future climbers.

This sums up the philosophy of our expedition: to explore these wild places while keeping them intact, maintaining a sound ethic, far from that consumerist, drill-happy mountaineering that abandons all rules in favour of satisfying an egocentric desire for success. The experience is etched much deeper than any bolt hole, and I'm super happy that all three of us share this ideal.

Back to the bad weather. The situation kept getting worse: it snowed incessantly, three of the tents provided by the agency collapsed under the weight of the snow (one of them while I was peacefully sleeping, and I almost got buried alive by 1 meter of snow), and the cooks fled back down to the village for three days, afraid of the snowfall. During these days, we experienced moments of great discouragement but also of happiness, of total anarchy after taking over the kitchen tent. Just like children, we quickly finished all the biscuits, Nutella, and chocolates, and spent the days barricaded in the mess tent playing cards and inventing recipes that reminded us of Italy.

Fortunately, the storm eventually came to an end. The sun started shining again, finally allowing us to go outside, and the cooks also returned after their dramatic escape to the valley.

While the weather improved, the valley was full of snow; a meter and a half had fallen at base camp, and the faces were also completely plastered. Some of our objectives were no longer feasible, so we had to look for other projects.

We immediately set our sights on the route Lam Thuck Khamzang, established two years earlier by a team of South Tyrolean alpinists on Fanny Tower, a very steep pillar on which, thanks to its verticality, the snow hadn't stuck too much.

After the first two pitches on troublesome rock, the face steepened and the quality of the rock improved significantly. The following pitches were exciting and consistently engaging, past beautiful flakes with some obligatory run-out sections to move from one crack system to another. However, due to the cold and the arrival of another storm, we had to bail about 100 meters from the summit and soon found ourselves holed up in the tent again, waiting for good weather once more.

Fortunately, this time the snowfall lasted only a few days, so we were immediately back on track, even though we were already in the final days of the expedition. While waiting for the snow to melt, we climbed a minor peak near base camp where we established a short but intense route we called Cuochi in fuga, Cooks on the Run, a VIII and A1 in "honor" of our cooks and their dramatic escape to the valley.

With only two days left before the porters arrived, we decided to attempt Remalaye, at 6,278 meters the highest peak in the valley, via an unclimbed shield on the east face. After a first day spent wallowing up to our waists in deep snow, we reached the base of this beautiful red granite pillar at about 5,900 meters, where we pitched our small tent on a small snow ledge on the ridge.

After a night spent enduring the cold, we were rewarded with a breathtaking dawn that gradually warmed us up and charged us for the climb ahead. We started the dance, initially on mixed ground and then on snow giving way to rock; it was a much steeper face than we had imagined looking at it through binoculars from base camp – once again, we learned that appearances can be deceiving. Unfortunately, the rock wasn't of the quality we had hoped for; huge stacked flakes and blocks as large as televisions ready to fall straight on our heads forced Matteo to do some slow and delicate climbing.

We climbed to 6,123 meters, but then we had to face reality: at this rate, we would never have managed to reach the summit and descend to base camp the same day, and we had no way of contacting the agency to tell them to delay the porters' arrival by one day. We started abseiling and headed back to base camp, with a hint of regret for having narrowly missed the summit.

So here I am, trying to explain in a few words – me, who can barely string two words together – an indescribable emotion, to recount in just these few lines a journey that was an adventure. One that cemented an already beautiful friendship, that taught us once again about patience, that we are merely guests and that the mountains dictate the rules and the timing, that mountaineering must not lose its ethics and respect for them.

What will I do now? I don't know... I've lived the last few weeks at 100%, and for now, that's enough for me... I'll think about the future tomorrow. I can only thank Matteo and Chiara endlessly for this opportunity; it was an incredible journey I've dreamed of since I was a child, and as a first experience to the Greater Ranges, I couldn't have asked for more. Well, maybe a little less snow... but that will be for next time.

- Davide Nesa, Italy

Info: www.ragnilecco.com