Sassolungo

Sassolungo is remembered in the book through a fatal avalanche on one of its slopes. The accident killed Piero, Giovanni Guasti’s friend and the narrator’s uncle, and left Giovanni blamed by his family for a tragedy whose memory endured long after the snow stopped moving.

The Winter Expedition

In March, during the first winter season Giovanni Guasti and Piero had undertaken together, they headed for a fork of Sassolungo. They had begun skiing that winter after Giovanni’s discharge from military service, borrowing skis and seal skins and returning at first to familiar places. They had little money for food and lodging and could not afford an Alpine guide. Giovanni, the more experienced of the two, believed that fitness and a way down were enough to manage a mountain journey. At Sassolungo, that confidence met conditions for which they were poorly prepared: they crossed a slope in the afternoon warmth after recent snowfall.

The Avalanche

As Giovanni prepared to continue, the ground beneath him began to move. He managed to reach a rock, but lost a ski. Piero, farther across the steep, smooth slope, lost his balance and was carried down as the wet snow gathered momentum. The avalanche stopped where the slope flattened, about two hundred metres below. Giovanni searched the snow for him, but could find no sign of movement. Without a shovel, he turned toward the refuge where they had spent the night, then returned for the remaining ski when the soft snow made walking difficult. He reached the refuge in mid-afternoon and called the emergency services. Rescuers arrived after dark; Piero was found the following morning and had died beneath the snow.

Blame and the Accident’s Afterlife

The family held Giovanni responsible. Their judgment rested on the expedition’s evident lack of preparation and on the timing of the crossing: recent snowfall and warm conditions made the slope dangerous, and, as the more experienced skier, Giovanni was expected to recognize the risk and retreat. Piero’s father, the narrator’s grandfather, could not forgive him. His anger persisted, altered his manner toward Giovanni, and led him to avoid him even at the memorial Mass for his son. Giovanni eventually stopped trying to approach him.

The accident also changed the course of Giovanni’s personal life. Piero’s sister, the narrator’s mother, began meeting him after the loss because she felt he had been left alone to bear the blame. They fell in love and married about a year later, despite the family’s refusal to attend their wedding. Much later, after hearing his mother recount the events, the narrator understood why glaciers had carried such weight for his father: they held the memory of winters that summer could not erase. Sassolungo thus remains in the narrative not only as the setting of Piero’s death, but as the beginning of a family rupture and of the narrator’s belated understanding of his father.