A Dangerous Business

Date: 8th September 2026

Start: Klausenpass

End: Klausenpass

Distance Travelled: 13.06 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: too locked in, there was nothing playing upstairs

Crevasses Fallen Into: 0

I’ll get to that stat point in a bit, don’t worry. My next destination after Madonna di Campiglio was Milan, and in typical Jono fashion, it required two buses and two trains to get there. I wasn’t here to hike, no I was here for the Italian Grand Prix. I’ve been following F1 for a decade and a half and this is the first race I’ve seen in person. Admittedly that’s not a crazy stat considering it’s a world championship that’s only in Australia for one weekend every year and ticket prices are crazy high. But hey, a good chunk of the races are in Europe, the Italian GP is iconic and happens to be one of the cheaper races on the calendar, might as well go whilst we’re here.

Arriving in Milan on a Friday arvo, there was only one thing to do in the blazing afternoon sun…

…explore the city on un-air-conditioned trams, obviously.

Saturday morning was of course dedicated to the local parkrun, set at a park on the north side of the city. It has a great community of runners and volunteers there, and I may have unintentionally gone a bit too fast keeping up with a team of Italian runners. Felt good afterwards once I had a cappuccino and the greatest pistachio gelato I have ever tasted (and only €2.30 for 2 scoops of it).

Once I was back looking like a human being again, I was off to Monza. Saturday’s programme had a couple sprint races for the junior series that follow F1 around, plus qualifying for the main event. I had a ground pass ticket so I didn’t have a reserved seat anywhere, but after picking up some McLaren merch from the Fan Zone (gotta support my boy, Oscar), I found a spot near the Lesmos (check the track map if you don’t know where that is) and set up camp to watch the action.

I had some doubts whether it’d be worth seeing motorsport in the flesh, only seeing the cars once every 90 seconds or so and not really knowing what was happening elsewhere. As soon as those first F2 cars came screaming around, those questions totally fizzled out.

Qualifying was just as exciting, assisted by hundreds of extremely passionate Italian fans, but the real excitement as for race day on Sunday. This time I had a grandstand seat near the end of the main straight. I got there as early as I could to catch the feature races for F3 and F2, plus some historic F1 car demonstrations. The race began at 3pm and oh my word was it a good one! Some grands prix can be a bit boring, this one wasn’t. Tonnes of overtakes right where I was seated, a fanatical crowd around me, and local hero Kimi Antonelli coming up from 19th place to win the entire thing. Incredible racing.

There was no time to recover from what had been an intense couple days. Monday morning was my farewell to Italy, boarding a train north to the land of cheese, banking, and clock-making: Switzerland. Pretty obvious why I’d be going here: mountains, fantastic rail network, and an Oli. It was about time for a reunion, so for the last 1.5 weeks of my Europe trip, I would stay with him and explore his homeland.

And explore we would. No settling in period, the day after I arrived, I awakened at stupid o’clock and got in a car heading directly for the Alps. Before coming, Oli had suggested summiting a 4000m peak (quite the milestone for an Aussie who doesn’t deal with anything above 2200m), however conditions this summer have been pretty dangerous at these heights. The permafrost underneath these peaks is melting thanks to our good friend climate change, resulting in rock that was formerly solid and stable now breaking off and causing large rockfalls. Not really the best place to be bringing a complete novice. The alternative was a 3000m peak not too far from Oli’s place called Clariden. Still way higher than I had ever been, and it required traversing a glacier.

So, off we drove through the Swiss countryside, arriving at Klausenpass just as the sun greeted us in the new day.

The climbing, say it with me, began immediately, only on a standard rocky, mildly eroded path for now. Normally this would be a piece of cake, but one change was that I had borrowed a pair of heavy boots from Oli’s girlfriend, Sandra. They’d be needed the further up we got, but from the get go I found them to be clumsy and unwieldy. Even the boots I wore at the beginning of the TA were nothing compared to these. I’ve gotten so used to just blasting up mountains in trail runners that now having to make slow methodical steps just to keep moving was rather frustrating.

Oli is great company to have on these hard climbs. Well ok, on one hand it’s a tad annoying seeing him make it look so effortless, but on the other hand he’s always so cheerful and chatty, helping to lighten the mood when things feel heavy.

Apart from us, we only saw 2 or 3 other people up here. It’s not a well advertised path – that one is back down near where we started – which does make sense as crossing glaciers isn’t exactly beginner friendly.

Speaking of which, we had now reached the ice. From my point of view, all I could see was a steep slope of slippery stuff that looked impossible to go over. But hey, Oli’s done it before so I guess it is.

We sat down at got our mountaineering gear on. That meant crampons, ice axes, helmets, harnesses, and rope. This is why I was wearing boots; microspikes on trail shoes wouldn’t have cut it. I really wasn’t sure how I’d get on, but I could trust that I was in safe hands and there was no- well, a comfortably low risk of anything nasty happening to me.

My first steps on the glacier were akin to a baby’s first steps on the flat ground in their house. It didn’t feel natural in the slightest. The ice was steep, lumpy, and it never felt like I could trust that the crampons wouldn’t slip out from underneath me. But they held every step. So up we went. Oli took the lead, looking out for any crevasses in our way or for any signs that a crevasse could potentially form. That’s one of the nasty parts of glaciers, you don’t really know how thick the ice is or what it’s like below your feet. Any step could collapse beneath you and then you really would be in a pickle, hence why we were roped up.

The glacier eased off into a flat plateau and Oli let out the full 10m length of rope. My job was simple: follow his path and try not to let the rope rub along the ground. I felt more comfortable on the flat-ish ground, so I relaxed and just observed the terrain around me.

At the far end of the glacier, the crampons came off but the rest of the gear stayed on. To reach the summit of Clariden, we’d have to go up and over a side peak, then finally complete a pretty sketchy scramble to reach the top. Honestly I wasn’t feeling too great about it, but decided to soldier on and see how things went.

The first climb was all scree which I just knew was gonna be a massive pain to come back down on. We got to the top and began dropping down for the final climb, and that’s when I got a proper look at what the scramble would be like. It wasn’t pretty. I trusted Oli could help guide me up it, but my heart wasn’t in it. I talked with him about how I was feeling, and we both agreed to turn back and stop at the side peak for lunch where we could still admire the majestic scenery.

I was disappointed to not reach the top of Clariden. It had been a slow and very arduous climb, plus the added time fiddling with equipment I was not used to. A practical concern we had was needing to get back over the glacier before the afternoon sun started baking it. Fun fact: ice melts when it gets hot, which on a glacier means a greater risk of crevasses forming. It’s very hard to predict where or when they might pop up, so getting back over the ice before the hottest part of the day was paramount.

Sandwiches and snacks consumed, we began descending back to the glacier. As predicted, it was painfully slow going down the scree. When we arrived back at the ice, I was glad we had made the call to turn back. Only a couple hours had passed, but the surface was way more slushy than it had been and there were more streams of liquid water running across the surface. Oli took the lead again and I settled into the return traverse, gradually gaining confidence.

Of course I forgot one thing. To get to the flat part of the glacier we were on, we had to climb up it. This is an out-and-back trail so… yeah, pretty simple maths, we’d be descending on ice. I didn’t take this realisation all that quietly, but Oli was patient and helped guide me down, giving me a few tips to aid in getting traction with the crampons. I still didn’t trust a single step I was making, but we did get down off the glacier. Looking back I can say it was quite fun, hopefully there will come another opportunity to explore another glacier before they all inevitably disappear.

But that’s really where the fun ended. We’d been on the move for over 5 hours by this point and the loaned boots I was wearing were becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Whether I didn’t have them on tight enough or some other reason, with every step on the descent, my toes were being jammed into the front of the boot. I tried not to imagine what damage was being done to them, all I could do was keep moving and look forward to ripping them off (the boots, not my toes) once I got to the carpark.

The rest of the hike went faster than I expected. I was bracing myself for more of the same tiny nervous steps I had taken to get off the scree, but the path was far more reasonable. That said, it was a long way to go down and the aforementioned feet issues were making me rather frustrated.

Once the ground transitioned from rock to grassy scrub the trail eased off even more, a small mercy now that I could barely walk 10 steps without needing a break. Oli had to race off to reach the bathroom, so I made the last kilometre down by myself, walking back through the carpark past a bunch of motorcyclists sitting at the restaurant who must’ve been wondering what was wrong with me.

As I promised myself, the boots came off the instant I reached Oli’s car, and what sweet relief it was. I’ll be glad to be back in my trail runners for the next hike we do. From there, we drove back down the pass, now getting to see the awesome views down the valley that we missed this morning.

We grabbed a few groceries down the bottom – and an ice cream – before making out way back to Oli’s flat, sore and satisfied. My first taste of proper mountaineering was a challenging but all-round rewarding one. I’d love to give it another crack, but for the time being, my body needs to recover.