In Val Masino Italy my partner and I set out on the Trofeo Kima Skyrace route. A version of the Senterio Kima traverse. Its an iconic technical race 52km over 7 passes with 4200m ascent. Massive boulder fields, snowfields and exposed ridges and steep but technically easy via ferrata the route is a big undertaking. We opted to climb to rifugio ponti spend an overnight there and then have a big day completing the traverse. Our route choice was well planned with beating the late afternoon thunderstorm forcast and a regular occurance. We climbed steeply up through the valley on a single climb of 1800m with our heavy packs of food and nessecary kit. We arrived for the night at rifugio outrunning the strom in the last 20mins of our day and staying dry and safe from lightening. The next day we had a relaxed morning ensuring some good breakfast was had. and climbed over the first col as the sun hit it. The first descent we carefully found route down through chains and rungs and then navigated incredibly icy snowpack through the boulders until reaching where the sun had cleared most of the snow. The first section being the most difficult boulders to cross a real tiring start. The next was the highest of the cols a very impressive gully with snow and scree. We traversed and reached the next refugio later than expected normally being far faster than the route signs times given. We were roughly 4hrs 30 to the 5hr sign. We powered on to the next rifugio aware it would be a very long day so planned to have a bigger feed there of pasta to keep us going. We reached the penultimate col when we called the day. Aching from technical descents with a long way down to go and the hope of a big meal in town we descended leaving one small section, perhaps an additional 2-3 hrs in our tired state. We found one of the alternate descents on our map and followed it down joining the path in the valley after a couple hours. In time for pizza and not out in the dark. Our first day was 18km with 1800m climb and second day being 29km with 1900m climb, solo climbing the easy but hard work via ferratas of the cols after much research to their difficulty.
