Sergio Gabbio is one of the guides who have started the season in Alagna the freeride paradise. He knows every corner of the Monte Rosa. He tells of whether “born Alagna January 12, 1956, I met him very early skiing at age four and six he did use to go to school every day, living on the high hamlets of Alagna. Finished the compulsory school was placed in boarding school in a gray city, I graduated high school with difficulty because my world was in the mountains as well, took advantage of his military service to attend courses for alpine ski instructor and later the driving courses Alpine. I began to discover in the eighties a new dimension to experience the mountains, extreme skiing down for the first time from the south wall of Monte Rosa with short skis using rope and ice screws. This helped me understand the great potential of the Monterosa ski area, I started working on group ski adventure programs and ski off-piste, opening the first contacts with foreign agencies, identifying the client suitable for the purpose. The love for the mountains and the passion for it, are the ingredients of my life where the most beautiful satisfaction is transmitted. Sergio Gabbio Monte Rosa Mountains lord.
Sergio Gabbio
Sergio Gabbio: Monte Rosa Mountains lord
When I invented the philosophy of Freeride
Benefited from the location that surrounded the Walser village of Alagna and the fact of being born in a wonderful place embraced by the purest nature, leaving home to go to school in winter meant to put skis, traveling companions of my childhood. At the age of 14 I served as volunteer rescue on the slopes in the “mythical” Balma track, which route was prepared by a team of ski-bats from upstream to downstream. A difficult track for a few bounded by stakes where it was forbidden to leave the track. In 1970 I became a ski instructor and it was there that a special event took place that made me dream of a new way of approaching the mountain.
On my tracks … One day in the middle of winter, with soft and dusty snow, I had a strong instinct to get out of the track and immerse myself in steep canals, dragging behind me high-level clients who were happy with me in this little-recommended adventure. The next day, inexperienced people decided to follow my tracks and being in the steep canals were not able to continue. Retrieved shortly from the mountain rescue, in all of Alagna there was talk of the fact that I had exited the schemes imposed by the lifts, to the point of preventing access for the entire season to the plants themselves.
Desire and passion boiled inside of me, so that with wonderful days, from home I went up with ski mountaineering, which still was not very evolved in our valley. I reached virgin areas like Punta Indren and Punta Vittoria, Valle Olen, where I traced new lines off the traditional tracks. My freedom had redeemed itself inside me. Thanks to this new approach that made free to know the mountain, and therefore have new points of view of my life in a new dimension that now expresses itself with the current philosophy of Freeride.
Some photos of the adventures of Sergio Gabbio
