A early wake at 4am up did not respond well to my body as my natural response to this was try to get back to sleep, this was hard as my dad’s power to be very annoying in early hours cam to use in this time. the breakfast was average as are most in the early hours when you have a dried up mouth. we finally left at 4:40 to attempt and climb the highest mountain in Italy*. As always it looks at lot easier than it really is, the long slow pace walk up the various rocks and hills was getting to me and my mood was not improving thanks to dad’s very helpful little comments to perk me up (note the sarcasm). We then put on crampons which although it was time consuming were quite sharp. Then the walk began it seemed short after a long walk over the first hill, our guide said we were only 500m from the top, I was encouraged till i saw a steep long walk to a ridge, which then connected to the last push to the top, aw with heavy feet we ploughed on, when we had reached the top after a series of diagonal lines we made it up to the ridge where we were promised a relieving stop of which it was hard to do anything as dad tried to order me around to put on suncream and eat a piece of half eaten sandwich, so finally we attempted the last push to the summit which looking at it was long, steep and crowd, a combination of things I don’t the like. but we finally made it pass the hordes of people coming down where there were even more people, but to the response of our guide patrice, we pushed straight pass everyone to make it to the summit with the virgin statue which was to say at the least scary as walking on rocks with crampons over 1000m drops was not enough at the top there was a space of 2m with a rock bench over a 500m drop, I have to say after reaching the 4060m summit I was glad to be down and walking down which was a lot tricker then expected made harder and slower by Dad’s swearing at the rocks and snow on the final bit down to the hut, vittonio emmanuelle II, when he also fell in a hole and twisted his knee. But finally we were down at the hut. coca cola and beer galore.