The female side of the mountain

by Anna Torretta

 

Alpinism still has an image of a sport for men. In order make always more women asced mountains we need a patient work to slowly change people's mentality.
What pushes every woman, like every man, to climb up a mountain is not just the search for the unnecessary, the exaltation of the self, the reaching of a summit. Today in alpinism, the will to ascend a peak gives space to the creation of thin lines always more and more difficult. The level of difficulty gets higher and higher in every sector of alpinism and women are following the exact same steps taken by men, facing the same difficulties both on rocks and on ice. However, women alpinists are still quite difficult to meet.
"Why are there just a few girls who practise alpinism authonomously?" "It is because a woman school of alpinism in which women teaching other women to face mountain walls is missing!". With such a question and such an answer, in 2002 in Innsbruck, I founded with Pedra Freund, an alpine guide, the first female alpine school called "Woman Adventure" (Avventura Donna). I was living in Austria so that the first "Ice Climbing Camp for Women" took place on Piztal glacier, in the Austrian Tyrol. I wanted to start with the ice climbing, the male dominating corner of alpinism. The learning of the "piolet traction" takes place with some basic notions, that make the girls understand how the technique in climbing is more important than the strength. Many years have passed since then and many things have also changed.
First of all, I live in Courmayeur now, in Val d'Aosta, right at the base of Mount Blanc. I work as an alpine guide with the Guide Society in Courmayeur, where I am the first and only woman since it was established back in 1850.
I managed to work with the girls only on a private level, around Mount Blanc, sharing in-pairs experiences.
This summer I started a projectfor women on climbs and expeditions on the mountains all over the world. The project is called "The Female Side of the Mountain" and involves a Nepalese, Pemba Doma Sherpa and a aspirant American guide, Zoe Hart, together with other girls from Val d'Aosta. The project presents 2 aspects: one philosophical-practical and the other social-practical.
Groups of women alpinists are still difficult to find and moreover women haven't yet claimed their own way of climbing, if there is such a way.
This project trys not only to make women get close to the world of the mountain, with demanding climbs performed in female roped parties, but also looks at the "useful" side of climbing and offers experiences of direct contact, on rocks or glaciers, to children who have never had the opportunity to go up a mountain.
In addition to it, I collects writings, mountain travel notes of women in order to write, sooner or later, a book on the subject.

 

The incredible Anna

Anna Torretta was born in Turin, in 1971. Graduated in Architecture with a final dissertation in Industrial Design, "Fixed camp at 3500 metres", she lives in Courmayeur.She's been working as an alpine guide since 2000, and she works with for firms producing alpine gear, in the project phase of the production. From 2001 up to today she takes part to the Ice Climbing World Cup where she's always the best Italian. As a matter of fact she always comes in the first 5 places in the rank.
The dry tooling has become her warhorse, she's climbed the most difficult paths of this speciality in the world. She both loves rock and ice climbing, the granite, artificial climbing walls and the solitary climbs.
First and only woman registered at the "Guides Society of Coumayeur", she is co-foundler of the centre for alpinism, "The trace" in Turin, and foundler of "Woman Adventure", the first school of alpinism for women.